(V5) Do I need a merchant account? Print

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There are basically three ways to accept payments in your store:

  • Manually processed methods (like cash on delivery, bank transfer, cheque, money order)
  • Credit cards via an end-to-end payment processor (like PayPal, Paymate, 2Checkout, or Stripe)
  • Credit cards via a payment gateway solution (like SecurePay, Payway, eGate, etc).

Gateway services
A payment gateway is a service that handles the actual processing of online card transactions. The gateway acts as the go-between for your shopping cart website and your bank account. When a payment goes through the checkout in your website, the transaction is sent from the website to the payment gateway service. The gateway processes the transaction, and places the funds into an Internet merchant account at your bank. The funds in merchant accounts are paid into your regular business account, so you can access them.

When choosing a gateway service, there are generally two kinds:

End to end Bank solutions - have a gateway and a merchant account all-in-one. Examples are Payway, ANZ eGate, Payway, CommWeb, Bendigo MPGS, etc.
Standalone gateways - specialist services that pay funds into a nominated merchant bank account. Examples are SecurePay and eWAY

Which of these options suits you best will depend on things like the relevant fees charged by the payment processors for your transaction volume, and how readily you want the funds to be available to you after a transaction is processed. You would need to shop around to choose what's best for you.

You can see the gateways that your website supports by going to the Payment Plugins section in your store admin from the Configuration menu.



If you have any questions about a particular gateway and whether it's supported in your website, please just ask us by putting in a support enquiry.


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