Talk:Payment gateway
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SSL Certificates are independent of payment gateways. They work by providing a secure connection between the website and the payment gateway.
Depending on the payment gateway a website may not need a SSL. Using an API integration method, a website's visitor remains on the website through the entire transaction process, and a SSL is required. Using a simple method that some gateways provide, a visitor is redirected to the payment gateway to complete a transaction, where the SSL is handled by the Payment Gateway. The API method is more expensive because of the required SSL, but it provides a better user experience and if usually a better system for most websites. --Jestep 15:15, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
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[edit] What Exactly Do They Do?
Why do payment gateways exist? What prevents merchants from communicating directly with aquiring banks? How do Bank neutral payment gateways operate, for example, who does authorize.net communicate with? Do they talk to every single bank in the country, or is there some network that they hook in to.. and if it is the latter why do I need them instead of doing it myself? --216.27.176.71 23:59, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
Basically, the payment gateways are a secure connection to the processing networks. As far as processing networks go, they are very complex networks that connect directly to the back-end processors and they also connect to the card issuing banks. The processors have a series of platforms under them that the payment gateways connect to. Here is a really simple article and diagram to help understand processing platforms Processing Platforms.
Now as far as why you cant connect directly to the processor and process through them. There are several reasons. First off, they flat out don't allow it. The processors in no way want to deal with millions of customers trying to connect servers directly to them to process credit cards. Apart from being a technical support nightmare, there are so many ways that servers could connect to them, that it is just way more than they want to deal with. By using payment gateways, they know exactly what data is going to them which is great for control and fraud screening. Secondly, some ecommerce sites do connect directly to them, but these would be the ones doing hundreds of millions per year in processing. These companies and payment gateways have to pay enormous setup and yearly fees to get approved to send the processor transactions. I've heard that it costs something like $100,000 and $50,000 per year to have a payment gateway or a company approved on a single processing platform. So basically based on the sheer price and the amount of effort it would require to send transactions directly to a processor, it just cant be worth it for anything but a payment gateway or a huge ecommerce site. --Jestep 16:46, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Only for ecommerce?
I disagree with two aspects of this article: 1. A Payment Gateway is not only for ecommerce. There are many companies who provide connectivity from a "Physical" Point of Sale devices to the various Processors.
2. A Payment Gateway is not the equivalent of a Point of Sale; it is the equivalent of a credit card terminal. A Shopping cart would be the equivalent of a Point of Sale.
Does anyone know of the server and gateway requirements for these aspects of payment gateways?
• Payments methods • Transaction logging • Cost • Licence details • Vendor and product reputation • Compatibility with client system • Installation and configuration methods
Not entirely true, a Payment Gateway is not equivilent to a credit card terminal. A gateway might be as simple as a "pass-through" to a particular payment processor, or may add additional value added services, or unique protocols that allow multiple payment options to point-of-sale, or shopping cart systems not available in any credit card terminal device.
[edit] unabbreviated ASP
I changed asp to application service provider so people don't confuse it with Active Server Pages. Ryratt 20:07, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Scrape account
What's a scrape account? I couldn't find a definition of this anywhere.
Otherwise very informative.
[edit] Popular Payment Gateways Section
I removed the smaller players and left the most popular ones for reference. This is to curb the continual addition of providers as an advertisement. At the rate we were going it would have been a massive list which is not the point of this article. I left a comment in the page to let editors know not to add any more. If anyone disagrees with this please post here. stymiee 13:57, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
