Buying products online is as easy as clicking a link and entering your credit card information, but many consumers do not see the intricate procedures involved with accepting the payment information and keeping it from falling into the wrong hands. Authorize.net is a company that provides a payment gateway account1 and works with several banks so the merchant may set up an internet merchant account1 to accept electronic payments via their website. Both of these accounts ensure safe transaction of funds between the customer and the merchant. Small businesses are now capable of selling their goods to consumers in nearly any geographic location safely and affordably, thanks to the services provided by companies like Authorize.net.
Authorize.net provides small businesses the means to accept online payments saving them the costs of developing and integrating their own payment system into their website. The first step to set up a payment system using Authorize.net is to set up an Internet Merchant Account(IMA)which allows a business to accept online credit card payments. 1Authorize.net provides a list of several banks that the business may choose from to set up their IMA such as, iPayment or Chase Paymentech2. Opening an IMA also provides the benefits of the bank fighting disputes on the merchant’s behalf, the funds are FDIC insured and the business seems more legitimate because the payments are processed by a name the customer can recognize. After setting up an IMA, Authorize.net then provides a Payment Gateway Account1which authorizes the customer’s payment and securely transfers the funds into the business’s IMA through a series of steps. After the customer provides their credit card information Authorize.net routes the transaction data securely to the merchants bank who verifies the funds are available with the organization (Mastercard, Visa, etc) who issued the card. After verification, Authorize.net reports the results back to the merchant and customer, if the required funds are available the goods or services are exchanged and the funds are transferred from the customer’s account into the merchant’s IMA within two to four business days3. Using the payment gateway account provided by Authorize.net merchants may accept payments safely from nearly any credit card a customer may have. Authorize.net also provides a variety fraud detection services to protect the merchants who use their payment system. An example of such services areShipping-Billing Mismatch Filter which helps “Identify high-risk transactions with different shipping and billing addresses, potentially indicating purchases made using a stolen credit card.”4 this helps protect a merchant’s profits by flagging suspicious transactions as potentially fraudulent.
In conclusion, there are a variety of benefits an e-business may enjoy from using a company like Authorize.net to process their transactions. The cost of using a company like Authorize.net to process transactions is much lower than developing a payment system from scratch. The sensitive account information of both the customer and merchant is securely transferred using Authorize.net’s own infrastructure. Merchants are also protected from fraudulent transactions by a vast number of fraud detection filters and tools hosted by Authorize.net.4
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