Payment Gateways

A payment gateway is a plugin that is used by Billing to communicate with an external payment gateway (for example, Authorize.NET, PayPal, and so on).

Billing communicates with payment systems through a payment gateway plugin that is unique to each external payment gateway (for example, Authorize.Net or PayPal). Payment gateways are responsible for:

• Processing payments online or offline.
• Checking credit cards for possible fraudulent transactions.
• Providing authentication data.

There are four types of payment gateways in Billing:

• Redirection, for example, PayPal: Billing, upon 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. Upon a successful response from the payment gateway, the payment is released.
• 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 number, with the number bound to the payment. The customer can pay for the order in a bank or a 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.

For additional information, please refer to the Billing Provider's Guide.