Recently we been having a lot of customers interested on online transactions and ways to start accepting credit cards and checks online, most of them have no idea how this could be done, and the opinions are as wild as they could be, so we decided to write an article, and try to explain as clear as possible, what a payment gateway is and how to integrate it into your website.

If you don't know what a gateway account is we can say it is like a credit card terminal which is on a website instead as a physical machine. The gateway have the ability of getting the transaction information from your customer and submit it to the merchant bank for processing, once the process is done the merchant send information back to the payment gateway and this one let your customer know it the transaction was in fact accepted or declined by the bank along with other information such as transaction ID, messages of why the transaction wasn't accepted and so and so.

Let's use Authorize.net as a sample.

For people how don't know, Authorize.net is one of the biggest in the Payment Gateway business and it's also one of the most popular.

Authorize.net on top of the payment gateway services, they also have other services on their list, Recurring Billing, Customer Information Manager, checks processing, among others. Other Payment Gateway Companies have different services, but those are the most commonly used on the today's online everyday transactions.

Once you decide to charge for your services online or sale your products in your ecommerce site you need a payment gateway to process and handle your customer's payments. The prices for these services vary; you can expect to pay about $25 to $150 for the gateway setup, about $5 to $15 per month for the gateway, and around $.00 to $0.10 per transaction. Of course there are some merchant or gateway providers that will give away a gateway setup for free, but as there are setup costs that the merchant provider usually pays, you may still have a higher than normal monthly. So paying something for the setup may reduce your monthly costs and keep them down for the duration of the account. This pricing is usually in addition to the internet merchant account pricing, so make sure that if you are quoted one rate (or both for that matter) that you have the entire picture of what you'll be charged so you aren't left with surprises after you get your first monthly statement.

In our never ending search for options for our clients we had made some good relationships with some of the most prestigious merchants and we can obtain some very good rates based on it. Our clients can have all the advantages of Authorize.net payment gateway with no setup fee and very, very low monthly rates. Give us a call and we will explain to you with no compromise.

With a gateway account, there are some providers who have an option to process the transactions using a USB reader. What this does is allow the transaction to be processed at a "retail" rate because the card is physically present at the time of the transaction as demonstrated by the fact that the magnetic strip was read instead of just the credit card number. This doesn't work for all merchants, but if you are doing a good percentage of your transactions live, at tradeshows or a storefront as well as via the internet, this solution may work well for you and save you money in the long run. These readers typically cost around $50 to $70 or so for the basic ones and make sure your gateway company allows this type of transaction. This also means that you setup your account with your provider as a retail account as well, not an internet account. This is the only way you'll get those lower rates.

We been working integrating merchant accounts and payments gateways on websites for more than 7 years already, our experience in this field is more than enough to guarantee our work, we can make your website start producing money for you in just hours at a very affordable price.

Give us a call and our web development team will explain all the options and ways for you to start accepting credit cards and checks online in no time. Give us a call at 305.386.9003