What is a Gateway?

In short, a gateway connects your ecommerce Website to your merchant account.

The gateway facilitates online payments by connecting your secure order form with your specific merchant account at a processing bank. The gateway takes the submitted form data and presents it to the processing bank. When it receives a response from the bank, it presents that return data to the site of origin for appropriate handling.

The gateway itself doesn't provide ecommerce features such as shopping carts, Web hosting, or merchant accounts, although, as you'll see, many larger gateway providers do offer additional services like these.

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