Payment Gateways: An Overview

A third party between customer and merchant that gets the funds and delivers it to the bank account of merchant securely; this third party is known as payment gateway. It ratifies direct payment process, credit card for online retailers, e-businesses, or traditional brick and mortar.

A host of payment gateways are propped up by ChargeMonk with which you can acquire an account for processing payments. You can configure your payment gateway in ChargeMonk, in case you have a payment gateway in order.

Set up the payment gateway by logging-in to the web interface, and go to Settings > Configure ChargeMonk > Payment Gateways. Click Add a Gateway button and select your gateway from the drop down list and get started.

Configuring Multiple Gateway Accounts

You can configure multiple gateway accounts in ChargeMonk (i.e. configuring the accounts you have with your Braintree, Stripe and so on is possible in ChargeMonk) on both your live site and test site.

In case you have more than one account with a specific gateway (eg: more than one Authorize.net accounts for processing multiple currencies), all of them can be linked to your ChargeMonk site.

Smart Routing

A gateway account should be linked to your customer payment method, whenever he adds it to checkout or updates his payment details. The future payments made by the customers using this payment method are done by this gateway account.

Smart Routing option helps you to set up rules for selecting a gateway account automatically on the basis of the payment method and currency of the transaction chosen by the customer so the gateway account can get assigned by ChargeMonk automatically.

To demonstrate what in action Smart Routing looks like, assume that in ChargeMonk site you have facilitated multiple currencies, and have permitted your customer to pay you by Direct Debit or card. As per our example, it means; separate payment gateway accounts can be configured for direct debit payments and card payments in each currency. After configuration, the smart routing page would appear like this:

To review or configure the rules your Smart Routing is an obligatory step in your gateway configuration. By this step, ChargeMonk gets informed about the gateway account to be used for the types of payment method and currencies enabled in your site. It also provides a good opportunity to verify if any of the currencies are left unlinked to the payment gateway account.

To overtly identify a gateway account through the API is possible (as it is not usually required because it will be selected on the basis of the Smart Routing rules). It is easy to choose the gateway account that can connect with the payment method type with the gateway_account_id param in any of the subsequent API calls:

1) Create a subscription
2) Update a subscription
3) Import a subscription
4) Create a customer
5) Update payment method for the customer
6) Checkout a new subscription
7) Checkout an existing subscription
8) Update payment method
9) Update card for the customer

Points to note

• In case you have enabled more than one currency then ensure to configure the essential gateway accounts to process them. But transaction will not be processed by ChargeMonk, if a currency is not linked to a gateway account.
• Without a gateway account preference, payment method types in the Smart Routing page will not appear as an option to choose at checkout for your customer.
• If you want to change the Smart Routing rules that will only influence the gateway accounts associated with the new payment methods included to the system. The gateway accounts associated to the existing payment methods are not influenced by amendments on the Smart Routing page.

Testing the Payment flow

Once a gateway is configured in either the live site or test site, it is suggestive to execute test transactions to make sure that there is the appropriate functioning of the payment flow. Testing makes sure that the workflow starting from the customer making payments to the payments collection, functions properly.