What is a payment gateway and how does it work?

If you have an eCommerce or online store, surely more than once you have wondered how a payment gateway works so that transactions are carried out effectively, quickly and securely. Today we are going to explain it in a simple way so that this process is no longer something abstract and we can start to see it as something more tangible.

What is a payment gateway?

A payment gateway such as Paylands is the software that intermediates between the online store website and the acquiring bank. It is responsible for sending the purchase information between these two points, authorizing the debit or credit card and thus carrying out the economic transaction. This information, the buyer’s data, is encrypted or tokenized before being sent to ensure that it cannot be extracted and used for malicious purposes. In practice, payment gateways work in the same way as POS terminals in physical stores.

How do payment gateways like Paylands work?

At the point where the buyer has chosen what he wants and proceeds to pay for it, the checkout, the next steps will be carried out in a few seconds in the payment technology software:

A new payment order is created which activates a form in which to fill in the payment data (name, card number, etc.). When you click on submit, the data is tokenized and sent to the acquirer or bank.

If 3D Secure technology is implemented, as is the case with Paylands, the customer will receive a code via SMS or other means to confirm that he/she is not someone else impersonating him/her.

If all the information entered is correct, the processing center (intermediary between the payment gateway and the bank) will send a positive response to the card issuer approving the transaction. If any information is incorrect, the transaction will be denied.

Finally, having received the bank’s approval, the processing center will have to send the positive response to the payment gateway and the payment gateway will have to send the positive response to the online store to send the successful purchase message to the customer.

As it is easy to deduce, this process is very important and you only have to trust providers that meet all the guarantees of security and efficiency. Paylands is one of the safest payment gateways on the market, with its own technology and proven high efficiency. Find out how to integrate it into your online store without obligation.