Payment Gateway Integration

Payment Gateway Integration

There are now multiple providers of gateway services and although the technical capabilities have evolved the role of the gateway remains the same: to provide a secure method of transmitting payment data from the merchant to the back end payment processor. Very fee service providers offer free payment gateway integration and we are one of those.

For many developers and SAAS providers choosing their payment gateway partner[s] is not a decision driven by the potential for the partner to actually help grow their business. Integrate with usual suspects in gateway space, hand off the customer and hope for the best is somewhat standard. Support and funding issues, data hostaging, customer confusion on gateway versus merchant account, lack of payment options [specifically for recurring payments] and more can leave clients frustrated and looking for alternatives.

This paper explores these issues and presents alternatives that may lead to happier, more “sticky” users as well as generate additional revenue streams for the integrating application and its stakeholders.

History of Payment Gateways:

In 1996 Authorize.net was founded by Jeff Knowles who saw the need for secure methods to process non face to face credit card payments. The Authorize.net gateway allowed merchants and developers to accept credit card payments online and in non-swipe transactions routing the transactions to the back end processor. Common credit card back end processors include Elavon, FirstData, Global and Vantiv among others.

Authorize.net has subsequently changed ownership multiple times and is now a Visa owned entity.

Other well known gateway providers include Instamojo, RazorPay, PayTabs, PayPal [PayFlow], BrainTree [now owned by PayPal], Chase, Paymentech and more.

With PCI compliance demands gateway providers have had to manage sensitive data storage and the majority accomplish this using tokenization [exchanging full card number with replacement “tokens’ and vaulting data]. By doing so the merchant or developer does not expose sensitive card data in their applications.

This can create issues for the merchant. If the merchant changes their software/ASP application and needs to migrate full credit card data they may experience issues in being able to get full card data from the gateway provider. The payment gateway provider MAY have a defined process for the secure data hand off but there are providers who either refuse to help in the process or charge significant fees to do so. The migration process can vary from a few days to a few months depending on the provider. For the merchant this can be extremely frustrating and typically an issue they never expected until it became important to them. Being aware of these eventualities allows you to make a more informed choice in your gateway partner.

You are just one click away to integrate your website or online store to start collecting payments, and it is FREE!