What is a Payment Gateway?
643.9 million Indians make online or digital payments. Research also projects the total transaction value of e-commerce to reach ₹8,870,584 million in 2021. The surge in online shopping, widespread usage of mobile phones, easy access to the internet, and the Digital India campaign launched by the Indian Government have contributed in their ways to popularize online or digital payments.

It has now become a business need for retailers to provide online payment options to their customers. If you too want to introduce the option for digital payments in your website, then you would require a Website Payment Gateway, which is a software application that authorizes payments. It connects the bank to your website so that money can be safely transferred online from your customers’ bank accounts to your bank account or eWallet.
How do Payment Gateways Work?
You can easily integrate a payment gateway in your website by opening a merchant account at your local bank and then linking it to a payment gateway of your choice with the needed security controls. Most of the payment gateway integrations may use the same mechanism, which usually includes the following series of approvals and communication between different facilities:

• After the customer places the order, they head towards completing the payment.
• The customer provides their credit/debit card details.
• All payment details are encrypted by the payment gateway for security reasons.
• The encrypted details are sent to the acquiring bank and then to the customers’ card association (for example, Visa or MasterCard) which then routes it to the customer’s bank.
• The customer’s bank checks if the account balance is sufficient to cover the amount requested.
• After approving or declining the request, a code is sent by the customer’s bank to the payment processor to convey the same.
• This response is communicated by the payment processor to the payment gateway, who further passes the response to the website.
• The website conveys this response to you and your customer.
• If the customer’s request to pay is approved then you need to authorize your bank via payment processor to accept the amount.
• The bank deposits the approved funds to your seller account or merchant account connected to your payment gateway.