Payment Gateways

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

OA Billing communicates with payment systems through a payment gateway plug-in 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 OA Billing:

• General, for example, AuthorizeNet – OA Billing accepts credit cards from customers directly, saves them encrypted in its database, and processes payment transactions in the payment gateway on behalf of customers. Upon a successful response from the payment gateway, the payment document is closed.
• Redirection, for example, PayPal – OA 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.
• Direct debit, for example, SEPA DirectDebit – allows a provider to collect funds from a customer's account, provided that a signed mandate has been granted by the 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 out such 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 OA 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 OA Billing Provider's Guide.