Payment Archives - GUJRAT INDIA

What Is a Payment Gateway?

A payment gateway is the equivalent of a point of sale terminal found in retail stores. It can authorize payments for a myriad of businesses, including online stores and businesses and brick and mortar stores. It is a service that acts as an intermediary between the shopping cart, the merchant, and the financial institutions. This will include the buyer’s credit card issuer and the seller’s acquiring bank. The transfer of information takes place over a secure connection (SSL) and shopping carts are configured to send information in a certain format for a particular gateway.

How Does A Gateway Function?

The payment gateway will transfer information from the payment portal, which can be a website, a mobile phone, or interactive voice response service, to the bank or Front End Processor. Here is an overview of the process:

1. After entering his credit card number information, the customer will click the “Place Order” or similar button on a website.

2. The information will be securely transported from the website to the merchant’s webserver via SSL encryption.

3. The information is then sent securely to the payment gateway.

4. The payment gateway forwards the information to the payment processor that is used by the merchant’s acquiring bank (the bank where he has a merchant account).

5. The payment processor will send the information to the appropriate card company (Visa, Master Card, etc) and at that point will be routed again to the credit card’s issuing bank. The processor acts as the issuing bank for Discover Card and American Express.

6. A response is sent back to the payment gateway as to whether the transaction was declined or accepted.

7. The payment gateway forwards the response to the website. This whole process takes only 2 to 3 seconds.

8. Once all the funds are available, money may be transferred from the merchant account to a business account.

Other Services

Many of the gateway service providers will offer tools that can detect fraud which includes verifying the delivery address and geographic location of the buyer. They may also calculate the taxes before the request for authorization is sent. Most payment gateways offer an information screen for inputting data.

If you sell products or services online, this is one of the things you need to accept credit card payments. Most service providers include the capability of accepting echecks so the customer has the option of using their checking account.

Efficient Invoicing Strategies for Freelancers and Web Designers to Get Payment on Time

When it comes to managing the finances of a business, it is certainly not a very exciting task. It can prove to be quite cumbersome and boring. Moreover, if one is not from accounting background, managing finances will seem like a herculean task. And the fact is that most of the designers do not prefer to take care of finances even if it is an integral part of a business.

In order to run a designing company successfully, mere designing skills are not sufficient. You need capital to run your business successfully. And for that you need to send an invoice to your clients so that they can send you your fee. Mentioned below are some great freelancing tips for freelancers and designers who are about to start their own company.

First and foremost, you need to find a powerful and a robust invoicing solution. Although there are plethora of online invoicing apps available. These online invoicing apps are designed keeping in mind the requirements of freelancers. Some of these apps are available for free, while others come with a price tag. The paid invoicing apps are available in different price range. The price of an app depends on the features provided by it. The more features an app has to offer, the higher will be the price.

Other than generating the invoices, an online invoicing app also helps a lot in saving a good amount of time and allows you to manage an archive of invoices in an efficient manner. An effective professional invoicing application helps you in searching previous bills, figuring out received funds. It also makes other such tasks a lot easier. Therefore, you should select an invoicing application carefully based on your basic requirements. Some apps are available with just one time fee, while others are available with a monthly subscription fee.

Secondly, you need to keep your clients well informed. Whatever policies you have set for your business, for instance- payment terms, hourly rates, pending amounts etc should be conveyed to the clients very clearly. If a client finds something irrelevant in the invoice, they may want to clarify it and this will result in a delay in your payment. Therefore, it is imperative that when you send your invoice, you should make sure that the client is aware of everything that you have mentioned in the invoice.

Thirdly, you should define all your policies well. Good clients always pay on time. But sometimes due to certain reasons there could be a delay in the payment. Here is what you should do if a client does not pay on time.

1.Determine how many days you want to give to clients for late payments.

2. Decide the amount of late fee that would be levied.

Once you set up the policies, you should also be flexible enough to accommodate some exceptions. For instance- if a client has a genuine reason for the delay in the payment, you should waive the late fee.

Fourthly, you should include your contact details in the invoice. Your contact details should be there stated clearly. Also, you can include some basic information about your business. You can include information like you name, company name, address, contact number and the email id. Including your contact details makes sure that the process gets accelerated and the client knows whom to contact if the need arises.

You should also include client’s information in the invoice. This is very important. It helps in establishing the fact that you are expecting payment from them. And if there is a non payment issue, you can always use the invoice as an evidence.

Another important thing to be mentioned is the due date of the invoice. State clearly by when the client should make the payment. If you do not mention the due date, you will not be able to implement your late fee policies. After designing the policies for non payment, you can include them as a note in the invoice.

Lastly, and importantly, you must mention the mode of payment which you accept. This will help clients in knowing how to transfer your fee to you. Also mention the details of the recipient. If you miss out on any important information, it may delay your payment.

How to Select a Secure Payment Gateway

Accept All Major Credit Cards and Electronic Checks for your Online Business, Retail Store and Mobile Sales Force using a Single Payment Gateway Service

A real-time payment gateway service provides merchants with a secure method for accepting credit card and electronic check payments. A secure online point-of-sale service allows the merchant to capture customer credit card or checking account information then transmits that information over an encrypted SSL connection. Successful transactions will move the customer payment from the customer’s credit card or checking account to the merchant’s business bank account.

The top rated real-time payment gateway services can be used to process retail, mobile and online customer sales. As a merchant you want to select a virtual point-of-sale service that can support your business as it grows. Therefore, you want to select a payment gateway service that can support multiple sales environments (e.g. retail, online and mobile) without requiring you to open multiple gateway accounts.

Since there are a multitude of real-time payment gateways to choose from I have provided a checklist to help you select the right service for your business. Ultimately, you must select a service that meets the unique requirements of your specific business.

Merchant checklist for choosing a payment service (e.g. features must be included at no additional cost):

o Real-time sales reporting

o Virtual Terminal/Batch Uploads for processing manual transactions

o Virtual POS for processing card present transactions

o Recurring Billing capabilities for processing membership and subscription services

o Integration Method for integrating payment processing into your back office software

o Online knowledgebase

o Online Help Desk

o “Live” Technical Support

o Load-balancing for processing multiple merchant accounts using a single payment gateway account. This will become an important feature as your business grows.

o Commercial and Open Source Shopping Cart Payment Modules

o Secure Online Merchant Interface

o Address Verification (AVS)

o Retail POS software support

o CRM Payment Modules (open source and commercial software support)

o PCI Compliant service

Optionally, you should be able to select the following add-on services:

o Electronic Checks processing

o Advanced Fraud Protection Tools

o PCI Compliant Data Storage and Retention for storing customer payment data

o Mobile Payment Software (e.g. iPhone)

Always keep in mind, when you choose a payment service you are selecting a service to process your customer payments which is the lifeline of your business.