{"id":4821,"date":"2020-03-04T18:45:41","date_gmt":"2020-03-04T18:45:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.paymentfacilitator.com\/?p=4821"},"modified":"2021-06-15T22:31:07","modified_gmt":"2021-06-15T22:31:07","slug":"what-is-a-payment-gateway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/infinicept.com\/payment-facilitator\/learn\/get-started\/what-is-a-payment-gateway\/","title":{"rendered":"What is a Payment Gateway?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>The payments industry is a complex system of pieces, all working\ntogether to make it possible for a consumer to purchase an item or a service\nsimply by inserting a card at a retail location or entering their payment\ncredentials into a web site. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What happens after the consumer initiates the transaction\ninvolves the customer\u2019s bank, the merchant\u2019s bank, and players in between, all\nof whom have important roles to play in protecting the system from risk and getting\nthe transaction data where it needs to go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Which brings us to the term \u201cpayment gateway.\u201d It\u2019s often\nmentioned as a necessary piece of the puzzle. But what \u2013 exactly \u2013 is it? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In its simplest terms, a payment gateway is just that \u2013 an\nentry point into the payments system. It\u2019s a function that sits between the\nmerchant and the processor to capture and encrypt card and transaction data.\nThe gateway packages the data and submits it on the merchant\u2019s behalf to the\nprocessor for routing of the transaction to the card networks and issuing bank.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In a brick-and-mortar retail store, the gateway can act as\nan intermediary between the software in the POS terminal and the payment\nprocessor or processors, passing along the transaction message from one place\nto another. During online transactions, it may be offered through an API that\nintegrates with the point of purchase. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A variety of companies offer gateway services. Some firms\nsuch as Authorize.net offer standalone payment gateways. Processors and\nmerchant acquirers such as Worldpay from FIS also provide payment gateways as\npart of their suite of acquiring services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Payment gateways originated in conjunction with ecommerce. When the original ecommerce websites started, they found it difficult to integrate with the rigid but steady and reliable infrastructure of payment processors. It was so difficult and time-consuming (taking a year or more to become certified) that new technology was innovated to connect and certify to each processor once, while allowing e-commerce merchants to more quickly and easily integrate a more modern interface. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This morphed over the past 20 years to SDKs and flexible\nAPIs, adding tokenization and other features, branching out to many specific\nsegments and verticals. Today there are dozens, maybe even hundreds, of payment\ngateways with different features and capabilities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A payment facilitator may include payment gateway services\nin the solutions it bundles together to provide to its own submerchants. Or it\nmay choose to be gateway-agnostic and set up the needed technical integrations\nto support the gateways its submerchants choose.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The payments industry is a complex system of pieces, all working together to make it possible for a consumer to purchase an item or a service simply by inserting a card at a retail location or entering their payment credentials into a web site. <\/p>\n<p>The term \u201cpayment gateway,\u201d is often mentioned as a necessary piece of the puzzle. But what exactly does that mean? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_caption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_nocaption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_hide":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1017],"tags":[643,647,649,848],"class_list":["post-4821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-get-started","tag-payment-facilitator","tag-payment-gateway","tag-payment-processor","tag-submerchants"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/infinicept.com\/payment-facilitator\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/infinicept.com\/payment-facilitator\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/infinicept.com\/payment-facilitator\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/infinicept.com\/payment-facilitator\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/infinicept.com\/payment-facilitator\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4821"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/infinicept.com\/payment-facilitator\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4821\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7287,"href":"http:\/\/infinicept.com\/payment-facilitator\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4821\/revisions\/7287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/infinicept.com\/payment-facilitator\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/infinicept.com\/payment-facilitator\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/infinicept.com\/payment-facilitator\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}