A service for authorizing payments for an e-commerce website, an online retailer or a traditional business.
Payment gateways are a way to securely communicate a transaction between a payee (the merchant, and their acquiring bank) and a payer (the customer, and their issuing bank).
The payment gateway can be offered directly by a bank, or by a Payment Service Provider acting as a mediator between the payee bank and the payer bank. Some payment gateways also offer an API or SDK to allow developers to integrate the payment gateway into online platforms or mobile applications.
Payment gateways usually employ security mechanisms to pass the payment related information from customer to the merchant and from the merchant to the bank securely. In some popular payment types such as credit and debit cards, the security measures must comply with an industry standard and regulatory requirements.
Payment gateways may provide various modes of payment such as by credit card, debit card, online banking or mobile banking for executing the transaction.