3 Tips For Choosing A Payment Gateway: Collecting Money Online
As a consumer, when you check out of your local convenience store, you may swipe your credit card through a point-of-sale device and your gas, coffee, and donut are paid. But what if you are the retailer and your business is online? Its not like you have a card-swiping device at every customers PC! There must be a way for you to process that information. Essentially, that is the job that a payment gateway does for online retailers. Roy Banks, president of http://Authorize.net, a leader in the payment gateway industry, describes his companys function as the digital version of a hardware point of sale terminal.
What is a Payment Gateway?
Payment gateways allow online merchants such as eStore owners or auction sellers to accept credit card payments over the internet. They authorize the cardholders creditthat is, they check to ensure that the customer has enough money on their credit card to cover the charges. They then place a hold on that amount so the buyer cant turn around and spend that same money elsewhere before it gets transferred to the retailers merchant account. Banks describes this as the...