Billing communicates with payment systems through a payment gateway plug-in unique for each external payment gateway (for example, Authorize.Net or PayPal). Payment gateways are responsible for:
- Processing payments online/offline;
- Checking credit cards for possible fraudulent transactions;
- Providing authentication data.
There are four types of payment gateways in Billing:
- General (for example, AuthorizeNet): Billing accepts credit cards from customers directly, saves them encrypted in its database, and process payment transactions in the payment gateway on behalf of customers. On a successful response from the payment gateway, the payment document is closed.
- Redirect (for example, PayPal): Billing, on purchase attempt, redirects the customer to the payment gateway where the customer is prompted to confirm the payment. On approval, the payment is processed online. On successful response from the payment gateway, the payment is released.
- Direct debit (for example, SEPA DirectDebit): allows a provider to collect funds from a customer account, provided that a signed mandate has been granted to customer. A customer has to sign the mandate to authorize the provider to collect a payment and to instruct the customer's bank to pay those collections. Only after getting a signed off mandate from a customer, the provider can ratify the customer's payment method and start to process the payment.
- Offline (for example, BANKGIRO): a way of processing payments bypassing Billing. After selecting this type of payment, the customer gets a mail notification containing the vendor's bank account, with the number bound to the payment. The customer can pay the order in a bank or post office. When the payment is released, the payment gateway generates a text file in a special format and sends it to the vendor. The provider's staff releases the payment and starts service provisioning.
The list of all installed payment plug-ins is located at System > Settings > Payment Processing > Payment Gateways. The list contains all payment plug-ins installed and pre-configured, that is, you cannot add or delete payment gateways. You can only activate, deactivate or modify them. To access configuration parameters of a particular payment plug-in, click on the respective link in the Name column.