Introduction
Credit card processing has long been a cornerstone of commerce. Whether you’re a small business or an entrepreneur, you won’t be able to survive without a way to accept credit cards. But the reality is that accepting credit cards isn’t always simple, and it isn’t cheap either. Unless you know what you’re doing, taking on this responsibility can come with some serious headaches and unexpected costs down the line. In this post, I’ll outline how credit card processing works so that when it comes time to choose your payment gateway you have all the information necessary to make an informed decision about how best to protect yourself from fraud and secure your funds as quickly as possible!
Introduction
Payment processing is the process of accepting payments from customers. This can be done through a variety of methods, including:
- Cash or check (a physical payment)
- Credit card (a virtual payment)
In this guide, we’ll discuss how each type of payment method works and why you should use one over another in your business.
Security
Security is a shared responsibility. If you want to be secure, it’s not enough to just have good security measures in place–you also need to make sure that your customers are taking their own steps toward keeping themselves safe. This can include things like using strong passwords or checking for phishing attacks on their computers and phones.
Security is not a one-time thing. You should always be looking for ways to improve your site’s security and make sure that any new features or updates don’t introduce vulnerabilities into the system.
Security has shades of gray: there’s no such thing as perfect, foolproof protection against all possible threats all the time–and the more effort someone puts into trying something malicious (like creating an account) means they’re less likely to succeed anyway!
Fraud and Chargebacks
The ability to prevent fraud and chargebacks can be the difference between a thriving business and a failing one. Fraud is a growing problem in the payments industry, with fraudsters becoming more sophisticated every year. This means that you need to invest in security measures that will protect your business from these threats.
As we’ve discussed earlier, there are two main types of payment processing: card-present (CP) and card-not-present (CNP). CP transactions occur when someone pays using their credit or debit card while they’re still at the point of sale (POS). An example would be when someone swipes their card through an EMV reader at checkout; this type of transaction is considered CP because it takes place in person, where customers can see each other face-to-face before completing their purchase. On the other hand, CNP transactions take place over the internet–they’re not face-to-face interactions but rather interactions between buyer/seller conducted remotely via phone or computer screens.
Credit Card Processing Fees
Credit card processing fees are a major consideration for any business that accepts credit cards. Credit card processors charge these fees to cover the cost of processing transactions, which can include:
- Authorization and capture (when you authorize a card and then capture it later).
- Settlement (when you receive money from the bank after your customer pays).
The amount of your credit card processing fees will vary depending on how much you are charging per transaction, whether or not you accept refunds or returns on purchases made with plastic, what kind of equipment is required to process payments at your location, etcetera. In general though, most businesses find that they will pay between 1{b863a6bd8bb7bf417a957882dff2e3099fc2d2367da3e445e0ec93769bd9401c} – 2{b863a6bd8bb7bf417a957882dff2e3099fc2d2367da3e445e0ec93769bd9401c} per transaction in order to accept plastic; anything higher than this would be considered excessive by most standards!
EMV (Chip and Pin) Cards
EMV cards are more secure than magnetic stripe cards. They use a chip to provide better protection against fraud and theft, which can be cloned, faked or stolen easily.
EMV cards are more difficult to clone. The EMV chip is an integrated circuit that stores information about your card data in memory and creates a unique transaction code for each purchase made with it. The card number is not stored on the magnetic strip like traditional credit cards; instead it’s stored within this electronic microprocessor chip itself. This makes them much harder for criminals who want access to your personal information because they need specific equipment in order get at this data without being detected by merchants’ systems (which will reject any transactions where there’s been tampering).
In addition:
Digital Payments and Payment Gateways
A payment gateway is a service that processes payments on behalf of merchants and their customers. A merchant can use one or more payment gateways, depending on the needs of their business.
A payment gateway allows you to accept credit cards, debit cards, and other forms of electronic funds transfers (EFTs) online without having to set up an entire e-commerce website from scratch. It also gives you access to features like recurring billing and advanced reporting tools–all while keeping sensitive customer data secure behind firewalls built specifically for this purpose by experts in cyber security.
Payment Gateway Redirects (Checkout, Checkout.js)
A payment gateway redirect is a JavaScript snippet that allows you to seamlessly redirect your website visitors from your site to the payment processing company’s website and back again. You can use this technique if you want to keep track of who has made payments and how much they’ve spent, or if you want to offer digital goods (like ebooks) as well as physical ones.
Checkout provides both a standalone plugin and an option for integrating with other e-commerce platforms such as WooCommerce or Shopify via their API (application programming interface). It’s popular because it offers an easy-to-use interface for setting up regular payments without having any technical knowledge about code or payment gateways; however, it does require some integration work on your part before using this plugin on your site–you’ll need access control software like Apache mod_rewrite enabled so that checkout can redirect users back after purchasing something online!
Know how credit card processing works and how to take advantage of it.
It’s important to understand how credit card processing works, because this knowledge can help you reduce costs and increase revenue.
You’ll also be able to better protect yourself from fraudsters who try to use stolen credit cards.
Conclusion
As you can see, credit card processing is a complicated subject. But with the right knowledge and tools, you can make sure your business is getting the best deal possible on its payments. This article has given you all of that information in one place so that you don’t have to spend hours researching different providers or reading through manuals from each one–I hope it helps!
