What is a Payment Gateway?
A Payment Gateway is a software interface that enables a website or application to submit requests to charge a customer’s credit card. By itself, a payment gateway cannot process transactions, a business will also need to apply for a merchant account.
What is a Merchant Account?
A Merchant Account is a facility a business will open at a bank or payment processor to accept the requests from a payment gateway to charge their customer’s credit card. Note that a Merchant Account is different to your business bank account. Unlike your business bank account where you can have complete control over your account, your Merchant Account is only a holding place for deposits.
It can be difficult for small businesses to be approved for an online Merchant Account through banking institutions. Typically, banking institutions will require historical details about your business, turnover and average transaction value. This can be problematic for a new business without prior history.
A Merchant Account allows a business to issue payment instructions on behalf of the card holder. When banks approve a Merchant Account, they consider how risky the business requesting the Merchant Account is. Risky businesses are more likely to incur disputes and cost the bank money. To insure against potential risk, banks may ask businesses to provide a deposit as security in order to open a merchant account.
Customer
- Software vendor
- Customer facing software
- Payment gateway
- Software interface for accepting card payments
- Acquiring bank
You
Pin Payments = Payment Gateway + Merchant Accounts
Instead of asking a small business to setup and manage accounts with multiple providers, Pin Payments provides a single, simple account that combines both the Payment Gateway and Merchant Account.
Signing up for an account with Pin Payments is free with no lock in contract. Our pricing is competitive, with no hidden fees or hidden monthly fees. What’s more, when you sign up with Pin Payments you automatically gain access to a number of different ways to process credit card payments. Your business can start accepting card payment from your on online stores, in-person sales and manual sales to name just a few!
Customer
You
