Merchant Account Shopping Cart
Conducting business online is very sensitive. An online business owner needs to make sure that his site is secured and he is holding businesses with real people or companies. To make sure that these two are accomplished, online business owners use merchant account shopping cart.
This is a feature that has have the ability to track customer orders, purchase totals and shipping costs. Customers who are about to purchase, fill in their credit card and shipping information on a secure page, and then the carts automatically sends it to the merchant with all the information needed.
The difference is that a merchant account shopping cart shopping cart is designed to integrate itself in a client’s web store, unlike merchant account software that lets a client choose over the different companies that will build his web store. The Shopping cart also leases the software; the client can utilize the software as long as the monthly leasing fee is paid.
A shopping cart also uses the payment gateway method. This is equivalent to the POS terminal located in most retail outlets, unlike the merchant account software that manages the credit card transactions by itself and directs it to the bank afterwards. Payment gateways encrypt sensitive information such as credit card numbers, and they ensure that the information passes securely between the buyer and the merchant. When a customer purchases from a web store, the payment gateway performs a variety of tasks which are invisible to the customer.
At the time of the order in a web store, the customer’s web browser encrypts the information and sends it to the merchant account shopping cart browser. The merchant then forwards the transaction details through to their payment gateway which holds the detail of their merchant account transaction.
The payment gateway that receives the transaction information from the merchant forward it to the merchant’s acquiring bank. The acquiring bank then sends the information to the issuing bank, or the bank that issued the credit card to the customer, for authorization.
After receipt of the transaction information, the issuing bank sends a response back to the payment gateway through the acquiring back with a response code. This response code determines whether the payment is approved or declined. The response code also includes reasons why the transaction cannot transpire.
The payment gateway receives the response and forwards it to the interface used to process the payment where it is interpreted, and a relevant response is then relayed back to the customer. This entire process typically takes 3-4 seconds.
At the end of the settlement period the acquiring bank deposits the total of the approved funds into the merchant’s account. One of the most popular payment gateways are: AssureBuy, Authorize.net, and Bluepay.