In order to accept payments online, you will need to sign up for two accounts:

• Merchant Account
• Payment Gateway

Merchant Account

An OnlineMerchant Account is a bank account that has a facility to receive payments through credit cards. You have to pay your bank a setup fee and additional transactions fees for this facility. These prices can differ greatly from bank to bank, so ensure you shop around.

Payment Gateways

A payment gateway is a company that provides an interface between your bank's merchant account and your website. It is the equivalent of a POS terminal located in a shop. There are charges for using a payment gateway. These charges depend on the volume of transactions and the standard size of each transaction. It is recommended that you shop around before choosing a supplier as their fees can vary dramatically.

By using a payment gateway, in most cases, the transaction will appear to take place on your website. It is also important to be aware that some banks only work with certain payment gateways.

The current set of payment gateways that we support are:

• Paypal - Payflow Pro
• Westpac Payway API
• Netregistry
• eWay
• SecurePay

Other options

If the above options are too expensive, there are other options for taking payments online. In these cases, the transaction always happens on a third party website, i.e. the user is taken to another website and is then returned once they have completed the transaction. This method is not perfect and a few problems can occur, i.e. information on the order in our database may not match their database if the client doesn't return to your site etc.

The current set we support are:

• Paypal
• Paymate
• ANZ eGate
• Stratapay