A potential customer visits your web site. He sees something that interests him so he places an order, inputting his personal and credit card information on your site. You have a variety of options available regarding how you will accept this information.
Security is an important part of merchant transactions.
Most people are unwilling to provide their personal information without the assurance that a third party cannot intercept the information as it travels across the Internet. Once the information is passed to your web site, it must now be verified by your Merchant Processor. Since most Merchant Processesors don't provide connections to the Internet, you must pass the information through a gateway such as Cardservice International . The gateway services have a dedicated connection to your Merchant Processor. Once the gateway receives a response from the Merchant Processor they forward that information back to your web site where you can act on it accordingly.