What is a payment gateway and merchant account?

To make any credit card transaction possible your payment gateway and merchant account must work hand in hand. A merchant account is pretty much like a bank account the only difference is that it only allows you to accept payments via credit and debit card transaction done through your merchant account acquirer. You will not be able to use this account to accept payments directly by the customers in the form of cash or check but you will always be able to accept card payments into your merchant account via or through your merchant account acquirer.

A payment gateway works as a bridge between your website and the merchant account. There are a lot of payment gateway companies across the United States and other locations. The purpose of the payment gateway service is to securely transfer the customer's information along with credit card information to the merchant account acquirer.


Sometimes your merchant account acquirer can also offer you the payment gateway. In most of the developing countries, the term payment gateway is more popular than a merchant account. In the United States, Merchant account seems to be more popular than payment gateway. This is primarily because the business community in the United States has been using the solution for very long time and in developing countries, businesses are still learning about it.

In the United States, you can find a merchant processing through different merchant account acquires. For this, they need a separate payment gateway that helps them to connect different acquirers to their website.

In developing countries since the volume of sales is very limited. Most of the Acquirer's do offer a payment gateway solution along with acquiring. They may charge additional for the payment gateway services but most of the times the merchant is unable to identify the breakup. They are unable to identify the breakup primarily because this is an internal step taken by the payment service provider

In a nutshell, a payment gateway is a bridge between the merchant's website and the merchant account acquirer. This payment gateway must be fully in compliance with PCI DSS standard and should be highly secure to protect the details of the cardholder the merchant account acquirer and the merchant.

Comments