How A Payment Gateway Keeps Your Transactions Secure
Payment Gateway
Payment gateway facilities are used to transfer information between the portal and the acquiring bank. This is a necessary part of keeping Internet commerce safe from fraud. It allows the bank to make certain checks before the transaction is either approved or declined, and it also ensures that private and sensitive information is sent over a secure layer. With Internet commerce growing at an extremely fast rate, the numbers of transactions carried out in this way is certain to keep rising, and it is vital that systems are able to cope with this expansion.
The process of the transaction starts at the point that the customer enters their credit card information into the web form. This information needs to be transmitted securely to the merchant to prevent it being read and abused by third parties. It is also necessary for the transmission of the information to the payment gateway to be secure. Once the information has reached that point, the gateway can then forward the information to the acquiring bank.
The transaction information needs to be passed to the relevant card association, which is usually Visa or MasterCard. These card associations have several issuing banks which they manage card transactions for. The information needs to be routed to the correct bank so that the proper verdict can be sent back regarding the transaction. When the issuing bank gets the transaction, it quickly needs to generate a response code. This is not just limited to whether the transaction is approved or declined, it also contains a reason as to why.
This is especially important in cases where the transaction is declined, because the customer will invariably not be expecting this to happen. They wouldn’t have attempted the transaction in the first place had they thought it would not go through. There may be something wrong which needs immediate attention, so the more detailed the report which can be sent back the better. More often than not, of course, there are no problems and the transaction is approved without any fuss or time delay. In this case, it is important to get the information back to the customer as quickly as possible, so that the rest of the ordering process can be completed.
The payment gateway is also used to transmit the information the other way once the transaction outcome is known. The entire process is usually completed in a matter of seconds, although there can be other steps to complete. Sometimes, a card is registered in a system which demands the user to enter a password before the transaction can take place. This adds a vital extra layer of protection, because anyone stealing a card is not going to know this extra password. The password system has the potential to make it much safer to send your information through the payment gateway.