If you’re an online merchant, you’ve probably heard about electronic payment gateways in reference to credit card processing, and you may even use one. However, there may be some confusion in your mind as to what exactly a payment gateway is and how it differs from a virtual terminal. USB Payment Processing® has the information you need to clarify the situation.
An electronic payment gateway is a Web-based service provided by a payment processor that collects customer payments by integrating into a website’s virtual shopping cart at checkout. The data that’s collected is encrypted and passed along to the card-issuing bank for authorization. Once issued, the authorization is routed back to the merchant, who completes the sale.
In essence, the payment gateway fulfills the same role as the POS credit card terminal found in traditional retail establishments. Like their countertop counterparts, payment gateways can handle a variety of functions. Transaction Express®, for example, provides a complete payment processing center that’s available online all the time — the ultimate in convenient and quick transactions for its users.
The real-time transaction capability of Transaction Express means you can do payment processing from any device with an Internet connection, which provides the flexibility and reliability you need to grow your business. Additionally, you benefit from a payment processing system that lets you accept credit cards and signature debit cards from a desktop or laptop computer, smartphone or tablet.
Additionally, Transaction Express offers a hosted payment button tool that lets online merchants and organizations create Pay Now buttons that enable website visitors to purchase items, pay invoices or make donations. In short, it streamlines the checkout process and helps protect shoppers’ sensitive payment account data. Once they enter their payment data directly into our server, you are relieved of the responsibility of receiving, storing and transmitting sensitive cardholder data because USB handles all the back-end processing for your business payments.
Other features offered by the Transaction Express payment gateway include direct swipe capability via USB card reader, tokenization for manual and automatic recurring payments (customer profiles), multi-merchant/multi-user platform, advanced customizable reporting and search capabilities, batch processing, and merchant and customer email management.
When considering adding a payment gateway to your business toolbox, it’s important to make sure that the one you choose supports your existing virtual shopping cart since they work in tandem. The shopping cart allows your online customers to store their selections for purchase and calculate the order total (including merchandise, tax, shipping and handling). Once that step is completed, the customer is automatically transferred to checkout, where they provide their payment information for collection and management by the payment gateway. Transaction Express is compatible with dozens of virtual shopping carts.
Credit card processing and the role of the payment gateway is information of value for almost any merchant who’s interested in efficiency, transaction speed, security and cost effectiveness. USB Payment Processing can answer your questions and show you how Transaction Express can meet the challenge of credit card processing online.