Payment Gateways/Payment Service Providers

In order to accept payment online your business needs to be linked to a secure payment gateway or payment service provider (PSP). Some payment gateway’s require your business to have a merchant account with you bank (like WorldPay and PROTX) or if you do not have a merchant account, you can use other payment gateway’s like PayPal.

Payment service providers generally charge commission or a standard charge per transaction and then you will also pay the bank a commission or standard charge at their end for the privilege and service of a merchant account. PROTX offer a service where you pay £20 per month and can get setup online without any more transaction charges at their end (providing you stick below their transaction levels)

A secure payment gateway is used to capture an end user’s card details and then send the information to a central banking system whereby the details are checked and confirmed or denied (depending on status of account). All of the details are sent electronically and encrypted (using SSL) to ensure that it is secure. Most payment gateways and PSP’s send the data using a minimum of 128-bit encryption which has become the industry standard.

1 Comments

David Craig

well http://www.ironbilling.com is also going good when it comes to high risk merchant processing thumbs up;x