Introduction

E-Commerce can be a complicated process to set up. Kimberley Web Design aims to provide a safe shopping environment to protect our customers.

KWD makes sure your website is great looking, easy to use and reaches customers across all business sectors. KWD helps develop an alternative sales channel and revenue stream for your business. Click here to see our E-Commerce Portfolio.

There are several ways of accepting Credit Cards On-Line. You can either use a Payment Processor or a Payment Gateway. A Payment Gateway processes your transaction in real time and a Payment Processor has a delayed response.

How a Payment Gateway works

The customer completes the transaction and has clicked the "To buy button". The information is then passed to the Payment Gateway/Processor, payment gateway checks validity, then communicates that information back to the website. At this point the information can go two ways:

  • If the credit card card is declined it goes back to your site (usually with a message, "transaction declined" please try again") This method is very user friendly, as it gives instant feedback as they may have typed in the wrong information.
  • If everything checks out, the payment processor says to your merchant account that the transaction is ok and the merchant account will take the money out of the credit card issuing account and put it into your account. It also communicates with your customer in your website to say that the transaction was good and gives confirmation of the order to your customer. All of this works invisibly to the customer.        

Payment Processors

Transactions are processed on a delayed basis. Transactions on the web site are completed before the credit card is authorised. Authorisation doesn't come back immediately, the customer is usually passed off to the processors site to complete payment - you lose unique branding, the customer is directed to google or paypal.

The authorisation is posted to the website after the fact, the processing can take up to anything, from a couple of minutes to a day, and as far as the customer knows the transaction is good, you have said thanks and they're on their way and then the merchant (you) gets notification, saying whether it was approved or not. So the customer is notified later if the transaction failed and that's a break in the action and could cost you the sale, u can lose a lot of your impulse buyers.

Payment processors, usually don't require a merchant account and more often cost less to set up and sometimes they are free but usually their percentages and transaction fees are more.

Merchant Accounts

A Merchant Account acts as, a go between, for the gateway and your business account. This can be your current business bank but doesnt have to be.

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