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I am developing a shopping app. But, for Credit/Debit card payment, I don't want to use Payment Gateway such as Stripe & Authorize.net. Is it possible to make payment without gateways. Or is it necessary to use a gateway?

Hein Zaw Htet
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    You would approach a bank directly, apply for an e-commerce merchant account and they will provide you with a direct API on their own system. This is however a huge and expensive undertaking, even assuming you were granted a merchant account you would be responsible for collecting card data which means you would need to be PCI Compliant. As it would be your own merchant account if you were deemed not to be PCI compliant you, yourself, would be personally liable for any losses & fines caused by a security breach. Use a Gateway. – Alex K. Nov 19 '14 at 11:49
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    Possible duplicate of [Building a complete online payment gateway like Paypal](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2647430/building-a-complete-online-payment-gateway-like-paypal) – ApriOri Jul 30 '17 at 11:49

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Payment gateway is a piece of software providing a direct communication between a cardholder, a merchant, and an acquiring bank. Its common functions include but are not limited to:

Data encryption. Authorization request sending. Purchase confirmation. Address verification. Risk scoring. Fraud management. Geolocation estimation.

Speaking practically, you could go without a payment gateway, but it may result in too much work falling on your shoulders. In the world of payments, security is key, and you need to choose a reliable, PCI DSS compliant payment gateway to protect your transaction data & your customers money.

That said, for accepting online payments you need a payment gateway. Hope I was helpful!

user74000
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A Payment Gateway is usually a proxy to a Payment Processor, which works directly with an acquiring bank to access the card networks. Payment gateways typically offer value added services compared to processors, such as recurring payments, support, etc.

Going directly to a processor is certainly possible if you don't need these features, although the integration can be a bit more challenging. For example, if they only provide terminal capture, you would need to close and submit transaction batches yourself on a daily basis. Failure to do so could result in higher interchange fees.

Nowadays, the cost of integrating with an advanced payment gateway (with pass-through pricing, unlike Stripe) vs a processor is almost comparable, and processors even start to provide gateway-like APIs. First Data for instance has e4 (gateway API) and Compass (processor API).

pierre
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