1. The consumer places an order. The customer places an order at the Merchant Internet storefront, using his or her payment method of choice.

2. The transaction is processed in real-time. The Payment Gateway provides secure, real-time connectivity from your storefront to the Gateway platform. Like a credit card terminal in cyber-space, the Gateway securely routes the transaction through the financial network to the appropriate banks, ensuring that customers are authorized to make their purchase.

The Payment Gateway uses a client/server architecture for performing transaction processing. The client is installed on your merchant site and is integrated with your e-commerce application. The client may also be pre-integrated with shopping cart solutions and store management systems.

For transaction authorization, the Gateway client software establishes a secure link with its processing server over the Internet using an SSL connection, and transmits the encrypted transaction request. The processing server, which is a multi-threaded processing environment, receives the request and transmits it to the appropriate financial processing network.

3. The transaction is approved or denied. When the authorization response is received from the financial network, the response is returned via the same session to the client on your site. The client completes the transaction session by transparently sending a transaction receipt acknowledgment to the server before disconnecting the session.

4. The transaction is confirmed.  The Payment Gateway confirms that the transaction has been securely routed and processed. As proof of a securely processed transaction, both the customer and you, the merchant, receive a transaction confirmation number via web browser and/or e-mail.