Internet Payment Gateways

Why use a payment gateway for your business? In today’s digital age more and more businesses are creating an online presence. If you are a business that accepts credit cards online from customers, a payment gateway is an essential part of your day to day business. If you’re thinking of creating an online presence then understanding what a gateway does is essential. A payment gateway creates a secure place for your customers to pay for merchandise. With the integration of a gateway and shopping cart to your web page you can accept payments for orders securely online, and without having to remember to batch out your terminal at the end of the day. A gateway also offers benefits for the merchant using it. Many of today’s gateways offer a multitude of features that make running your business easier and less time consuming. If you’re building your website yourself you may not be entirely comfortable with the process of integrating a shopping cart to your gateway before adding it to your page. Many gateways are available with the shopping cart already added. All that’s required of the site builder is putting the html code into the site. Gateways also offer features that a traditional terminal can not. Recurring billing is the most widely requested feature by merchants. Gateways allow you to enter the contract and billing information once, and then you’re done. You tell the system when to bill the card, and you’ll receive an e-mail telling you if the transaction was approved or not. You will no longer have to spend your valuable time with manually charging cards once a month, and there will be no forgetting to charge your customers. Another benefit of the gateway is the ability to tie it into your QuickBooks program. If a gateway is set up with the QuickBooks plug in you’ll be able to easily import data from your gateway to QuickBooks, eliminating time consuming double entries. Gateways offer real-time processing feedback, letting both you and your customer know immediately if the credit card being used was approved. It also allows a merchant to collect Level II data easily which will eliminate some of the costly downgrades that can occur when a merchant is a . Beneficial to both the merchant and the customers, gateways offer added security and additional time for the business owner to focus on growth.