Secure Payment Gateway Integration: How to Make It Work

Emorphis Technologies
6 min readAug 31, 2021

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As online mode took the world by storm, the way of selling goods and services has changed beyond one’s thinking. Icing to the cake, addiction to smartphones especially, among the young generation has unfolded loads of opportunities for e-commerce and FinTech companies to provide services with just a click.

As per the research from Statista, more than 50% of the entire e-commerce sale will be done through smartphones by the end of the year 2021. What does it indicate? It clearly shows that the online medium has taken over the offline mode of doing business to a great extent.

Now, how do FinTech app development companies that offer services accept payment? The answer is simple. It is through a seamless payment system that makes online purchasing memorable moment for the customers. Not only it makes the whole payment procedure smooth, but also ensures the security of the personal information of the customers.

To ensure a better payment system is present in front of the customers; payment gateways are there to solve the security threats associated with the given system. A disheartening fact is that more than one-fourth of the customers leave their shopping carts due to given specific reasons:

Ø Complex Checkout

Ø Too many questions to fill the online form

Ø Fear of losing their crucial data due to constant security threats

So, the given statistics convey that it becomes necessary to choose the right online payment platform to get access to a carefree payment procedure. Before going forward, it will be prudent to understand the concept of payment gateway and its working method.

What do you know about Payment Gateway&its Working Mechanism?

A payment gateway is a technique where there is a collection of data from the customers so to transmit it to an acquirer. Afterward, a notification is sent to get either acceptance or rejection from the side of the client. They have achieved immense popularity as most of the online stores opt for a payment gateway to save them from taxes associated with acquiring their accounts and software.

The given technology acts as a bridge between an acquirer and a client’s website. Besides, it also encrypts the data of the clients stored in credit/debit cards to prevent online intruders to get access to it. Using that technology helps in simplification of the incorporating software for the merchants numerous times.

How Does Payment Gateway Work?

For getting an ideal FinTech software solution, the given system performs transmission of data when a person does transactions from their smartphone to payment processors and vice versa. It performs its duty by:

Ø Checking the cardholder’s authority (to make sure that there is enough money in the payment card for the transaction)

Ø Processing of the past payment to help clients check their fund’s utilization

Ø Allow refund for the users during cancellation of any order

Ø Take proper care of the compliance and security to protect the personal data

Ø Handling financial monitoring and KYC for the payment provider

To make the whole procedure more secure; the system takes the help of encryption technologies and security protocols.

Choose Best Payment Provider

There are numerous FinTech application development companies that work with genuine payment gateway systems by evaluating the following procedures:

Ø Acceptable currencies

Ø Countries where the transaction is possible

Ø Offering easy payment methods

Ø Swift transfer of money into merchant account

There are multiple choices available for customers regarding payment methods such as PayPal, GoCardless, etc. However, if a company is working at the global level, it might need to integrate numerous payment gateways.

Fundamental Payment Gateway Integration Methods

FinTech app development companies give utmost priority to the user experience by integrating the best payment gateways in their system. Several options assist a FinTech organization to offer seamless payment methods to enrich the experience of their users.

A. Redirection (Hosted Payment Gateway)

It is mostly suited for small business enterprises and helps in reducing liability with minimized scope. It acts as a 3rd party by persuading customers to leave the website to perform the purchasing operation. Though the easiest payment gateway option, it renders users with less working experience. Now, how it works:

Ø A redirect instruction is transmitted from the merchant website to the online system of the client

Ø The customer request the merchant to provide a payment form

Ø Payment service provider (PSP), a 3rd party, creates a payment form and send it back to the customer via an online source

Ø PSP receives card data from customers after acquiring payment form

Ø PSP sends card data to the payment system to check the authority

There is a point of caution: Merchants using redirect payment methods are still liable to the payment for their customers. If any hacker gets entry into the system; then they can redirect customers to the malicious site resulting in significant loss to their money. And who will be responsible for it? It is the merchant who will have to pay hefty fines and penalties.

B. The Direct Post or Silent Order Post

In the given payment method, the merchant website offers a payment form and not PSP. Through it, merchants have full control over the payment procedure. Moreover, their internal security controls protect the data while in the transaction mode. It works in the following ways:

Ø A merchant website develops a payment form for the customers

Ø The payment form gets displayed on the customer browser, and data is transmitted to the PSP

Ø PSP receives it from the card data and is forwarded towards authorization for the payment system

Important fact: It is utilized mostly by large merchants that have moderate risk. To mitigate it, they must use SAQ A-EP that comes with additional security controls to prevent further breaching.

C. The IFRAME

It is an inline frame which is typical payment gateway integration where a child page (HTML document) gets embedded into a parent page (HTML document) separately. There comes an advantage as it permits merchants to maintain a good user experience, branding, and consistency of running the website. It works on the following procedure:

Ø The parent payment page is created on a merchant website

Ø A client appeals for a payment form by developing a child page

Ø PSP creates and transmits the payment form to the system of the client

Ø The payment form gets displayed on the client’s browser and card data is send to PSP

Ø Card data displays into PSP and gets forward to the payment system for further authorization

D. The API

It is also known as merchant gateway where merchants have full control over the whole payment procedure. With the help of it, merchants can have full access to crucial information in respect to consumer trends, the profile of the customers, and marketing analysis. It has the following working method:

Ø A payment page is created on a merchant website

Ø Client browser showcase payment form which is completed by them and sends to the merchant website

Ø The merchant website transmits data to PSP

Ø PSP gets access to the card data and forwards it to the payment system to check their authorization

Point of Caution: It is a high-risk method for the FinTech website development companies as it is prone to online breaches and can seriously affect one’s website. Those using the given payment gateway integration method can utilize SAQ-D that performs internal and external scanning effectively.

How to Secure Payment Gateway Integration Methods?

It is prudent that the payment gateways must offer proper security to the customers to decrease the possibility of fraud and lay off credit risk from their minds. There are several ways of secure payment gateway that protect the website. These are:

I. SSL for Secure Connections

It encrypts the confidential data and not only increases the security of the payments but also makes customers favor more for online purchases.

II. PCI Certificate

Payment Card Industry (PCI) are security standards that are mandatory for processing payments from a site. It needs customers to follow some requirements such as using valid payment software, firewall, not storing sensitive data on PCs, and so on.

III. Tokenization

It reduces the risk associated with data loss expressively by replacing the sensitive data with a set of characters that get generated casually via a token. After the transaction, the confidential data is securely stored in a special server and allows payment to be done with just one click.

Conclusion

It is worth noting that there are several methods that both the customers and merchants must use to make the online payment system more secure. Moreover, they also allow seamless transaction of data without any difficulty. So, one must focus on providing security to confidential data and keep it at the forefront. Take the necessary security precautions and make customers happy for your prosperous business.

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Emorphis Technologies

Emorphis Technologies is a world-class software development company. We serve industries ranging from unicorns and startups to large multinationals.