Starfish Food

When you decide to accept credit card payments by way of your website, this requires multiple components. Three layers exist between the paying customer and your account at your bank:

Payment Gateway – This code will send the order of the client to and from the provider of the Internet merchant account. What does the payment gateway actually do? It provides you with the ability to accept all of the billing information of the customer. That includes the credit card type, the credit card number, the payment amount and the expiration date.

Internet Merchant Account – The Merchant Account is one that is set up with a bank or financial institution. This will make sure that you will be able to accept credit card payments from all of your customers. The payment gateway is what transmits the billing information to your Internet merchant account provider. However, most local banks do not provide this service.

Why do you think that most local banks or financial institutions do not want to bother to provide an online merchant account? This is due to the fact that transactions that are conducted online are very different than are face to face transactions where one has to sign in order to authorize a purchase.