Payment Gateway is the most important back-end feature for online payments through credit card, debit card or Net Banking. It is a financial service that is provided by either a bank or a specialized online financial service provider which works with e-commerce sites to enable smooth processing of payments.
How does it Work?
The payment gateway transfers all the payment relate information from the customer’s browser to either the merchants’ server or direct to the payment server and then the payment processor which is generally the merchant’s bank through encrypted connection. Encryption is very important especially these days as the risk of fraudulent activities are on rise and there are hackers who can hack the transactions to derive private information of the customers.
The merchant’s bank of the payment processor then submits the transaction with the card issuing bank to check for relevant balance and credit in the customer’s account and accordingly transmit back a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ for the transaction to be successful or failed.
This entire process which is highly technical and need superior coding happens in few seconds.
The Payment Gateway India is a competitively growing list where service providers try to provide the best and the most secured facilities in order to attract more merchants to get to work with them.
Few features that these service providers incorporate to get more merchants are :-
- They need to be PCI DSS compliant (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards)
- Superior integration facilities which integrate the merchant’s e-commerce site with the gateway
- The fastest integration services so that there is not much delay either the front end process or the back end.
- Some of these providers offer the merchants to go live as an e-commerce site in minutes
- Provide access to not only browser related sites on laptop or desktop, they have features which work with mobiles with different operating systems
- Ample technical support to the merchants
- Help in managing refunds, settlements and disputes
- Help in tracking daily sales and generate reports
- Helps save historical data and shows them as and when required by business partners
- Graphical representation of reports
- Some of them charge no fee for set up, integration and annual maintenance charges
It is also crucial that the merchants analyze certain points before tying up with a service provider:
- Ensure that the service provider is PCI DSS compliant
- Ensure that they follow encrypted technology to safeguard private data of your customers
- Ensure that their technology is updated and audited from time to time by government approved audit companies
- Ensure that the payment gateway provides safe login screens to the customers
- Ensure that the payment charges per transaction by the service provider is as per the market standards and not too high
The payment gateways earn their money by charging a fee which is a certain percentage of the transaction amount. There are certain discount schemes that are offered by these service providers for using a certain credit or debit cards.
