What is a payment gateway?

Payment Gateway is a service that is used to process online payment transaction when accepting online orders from your customers. Payment Gateway is an interface from the internet to the payments computer network of the respective credit card organization. Payment Gateways are offered by different banks and other dedicated Payment Processors. A Payment Gateway is a service provided by a billing processor, which allows credit card information to be collected and passed over the internet. A Payment Gateway can be thought of as a digital equivalent to a credit card processing terminal. Although there are many payment gateways available, some of the most popular include Paypal, Worldpay, Protx and Verisign.

Choosing a payment gateway

The choice of payment gateway id usually dependant on the type of payment solution you require (i.e. credit card, bank transfer, recurring payments, etc). Whatever the service you use it is this payment service that allows the secure transfer of credit card funds from users on your website to your merchant account. The requirements for an account vary from service to service, with specific requirements described on the web sites of most gateway providers.

With the online shopping trend increasing at exponential rates, it is very important that your online business is integrated with a payment gateway to your merchant account, so that you easily and securely get your money and also that customers don't hesitate to pay you online.

Why do I need payment integration?

The shopping cart system on a ecommerce system or the billing system on a service website will not automatically be linked to send/ receive information to the payment gateway. In order for payments from your website to work with the payment gateway you will need to custom program or use custom html code to send and receive data from your website to the payment gateway and process it on reception of the response.

We have special expertise in recurring billing and ecommerce shopping cart payment integration.

We can integrate your online store ,or any online business, with any payment gateway that you have chosen. At the Ministry we already have pre-built objects programmed for most of the major payment gateways and can produce a new payment processing code for any gateways we do not support from the code examples they provide. We have experience in most major payment processors including Authorize.net, PSiGate, WorldPay, Protx, Linkpoint, Verisign, iTransact, Nochex, paypoint and many more!