Online Credit Card Payments
Requirements for receiving credit card payments online in South Africa: - A Merchant Account for online trade with a major bank e.g. - ABSA, FNB, Nedbank, Standard Bank
- A Payment Gateway Service Provider, for example: MyGate, PayPal, Virtual Card Services and others.
What is an Internet Payment Gateway? When trading online, it is often the requirement that business need to receive credit card payments online. This sound simple enough but it simply isn’t as easy as one would like to think. An Internet Payment Gateway provider is the middle man. They are the company that interacts between the Merchant bank and the online shopper during the checkout steps of an e-commerce website.
Here is a summary of what is required if you want to receive credit card payments online via your online store.
1. A website on the internet capable of listing products in a catalogue from that shopper can select from and then place your order. This is where we come in.
2. A good relationship with your business bank. If you already have merchant facilities, this isn’t enough. You will have to apply for an internet merchant facility or "card not present" merchant account. Example: Nedbank, ABSA Bank, FNB or Standard Bank.
3. An internet payment gateway provider. The internet merchant account issued by your bank is sent to an internet gateway provider. The internet gateway provided takes care of the transaction between the bank of the online shopper and your internet merchants account with your business bank.
When you make the good choice of trusting us as your website provider, we will guide you in the processes of setting up an merchant account with your bank as well as put you in touch with one of our preferred payment gateway providers.
Unfortunately, credit card fraud is a reality. There has been some considerable debate among the powers that be (Visa, Master Card and various other banks) regarding a standard namely PCI Compliance. PCI is an abbreviation for "Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard". This is intended to increase the security of online shoppers while browsing and buying their favourite online items.
eSolve has integrated with two South African Internet Payment Gateway providers that comply or is in the process of complying with the new Standard namely MyGate and VCS. We have also integrated with PayPal currently powered by FNB but as the date of publishing this article does not yet support ZAR currency. PayPal is good to use if you are based outside of the Republic of South Africa and your currency is support pay PayPal.