Tag Archives: payment gateway

Host Merchant Services and Certified Hosting Announce Partnership

Certified Hosting, a leading web hosting services company, announced today a new partnership with Host Merchant Services that will enable webmasters to use merchant services with their web hosting plans. All Certified Hosting customers, including those on shared web hosting, virtual private servers (VPS hosting), and dedicated server hosting plans, are now able to apply for Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliant payment processing that is delivered to Certified Hosting’s high standards of customer service.

“Certified Hosting offers a range of ecommerce hosting services,” says Kacy Carlsen, co-founder and CEO of Certified Hosting. “We have made it easy for our customers to get up and running with an online store using the latest scripts and rock-solid hosting services. Quality merchant services are an essential part of a good ecommerce strategy for any business, and we are proud to announce Host Merchant Services as our chosen payment services partner. We are confident that Host Merchant Services will deliver the quality of service our customers have come to expect, at an affordable price.”

As a leading web hosting provider, Certified Hosting balances cost against quality of service. The company’s reliable web hosting services come with a 99.999% uptime, at a price that is affordable to new and growing businesses. Similarly, Host Merchant Services offers professional payment processing with fees that are clear, fair, and incredibly low. Typically, each type of credit or debit card transaction incurs a different fee, depending on the risk associated with it. Some merchant service providers charge merchants predetermined fees, meaning that merchants always pay the highest rate, regardless of which card has been used. Host Merchant Services charges merchants using a system known as Interchange Plus. Interchange Plus ensures that merchants only pay the fees that have actually been incurred, plus a small surcharge for administration. As a result, merchants using Host Merchant Services can reduce their payment processing expenses and more accurately project the cost of future transactions.

“There are no other industries where customers pay unnecessarily high charges,” says Carlsen. “Yet merchants routinely pay fixed fees for payment processing that do not reflect the actual transaction cost. At Certified Hosting, we provide fairly priced services thanks to Host Merchant Services. And now we can offer credit card processing to match. Even better, Host Merchant Services is – like Certified Hosting – an honest, upfront company that does not surprise merchants with hidden fees and charges.”

Another factor in Certified Hosting’s success is the company’s unlimited web hosting services, with no charges for customers who use a lot of disk space or bandwidth. The payment processing industry is full of complex terms and conditions, including additional charges buried deep in endless documentation. Host Merchant Services removes several common surcharges in the industry, with free applications, free setup, a free virtual terminal and an affordable payment gateway. Merchants are simply charged for the transactions they carry out, making accepting credit cards online more affordable and, crucially, more predictable.

“The most important thing about Host Merchant Services is that payment processing is made simple,” says Carlsen. “Host Merchant Services has no hidden charges, no expensive setup fees, and no unpredictable fees. With Host Merchant Services, our ecommerce hosting customers can quickly apply online, be approved in minutes, and begin taking payments in as little as 24 hours. We hope customers will take advantage of this new partnership so they can spend less on payment processing and maximize their profits.”

Certified Hosting has a proven record of excellent customer service, going the extra mile to help customers grow their online businesses. With this new partnership, Certified Hosting allows customers to get started right away with an affordable and efficient solution for payment processing.

Customers interested in merchant services from Certified Hosting and Host Merchant Services are encouraged to visit certifiedhosting.hostmerchantservices.com.

Industry Terms: Payment Gateway

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This is the latest installment in The Official Merchant Services Blog’s Knowledge Base effort. We want to make the payment processing industry’s terms and buzzwords clear. We will eliminate any and all confusion merchants might have about how the industry works. At Host Merchant Services, we promise to deliver personal service and clarity. So we’re going to take some time to explain how everything works. This ongoing series is where we define industry related terms and slowly build up a knowledge base and as we get more and more of these completed, we’ll collect them in the resource archive for quick and easy access.

Payment Gateway

Today we will focus on Payment Gateways and how they work, in order to wrap up our week of E-commerce driven content. A payment gateway allows E-commerce merchants to accept credit cards on their websites. Sensitive payment information is encrypted by the gateway to ensure that it passes securely between the customer and the merchant. We have defined a POS, or point of sale system already for the Knowledge Base. A payment gateway can be considered a virtual point of sale system. The gateway acts as a “middle man,” allowing communication between online shopping carts or virtual terminals and the banks processing the transaction.

The process can be broken down like this, it starts when a customer places an order on a website by pressing the “Submit Order” button in an online shopping cart. The payment gateway then forwards the transaction information to the payment processor used by the merchant’s acquiring bank. From there the payment processor forwards that information to the appropriate card association (ex Visa, MasterCard). The credit card issuing bank receives the request, or the Authorization and does the necessary credit or debit check and then sends a response back to the processor in the form of an approval code (ex approved, denied). Next the processor forwards the authorization response back to the payment gateway. After receiving the response, the gateway forwards it on to the website, which then evaluates it as a relevant response and relays the outcome to the merchant and cardholder. Finally, the merchant then fulfills the customers order, then after a batch the acquiring bank receives the funds, and deposits them into the merchants bank account.

Payment gateways can be stand-alone systems designed for integration with other 3^rd party systems, or they can be bundled with their own shopping carts and virtual terminals. It’s worth noting that most merchants will not need to install additional software on their own servers to run a basic payment gateway. Some payment gateway providers are simple to implement, but do not offer much customization. Others are more complex but can be customized to your needs.

Host Merchant Services offers a variety of E-commerce solutions to fit your business, including Transaction Central, our own cutting edge in house payment gateway. HMS is able to interface with most of the major Payment Gateways out there, including Authorize.net. We also offer unparalleled protection for all of our merchants in the form of our PCI Compliance Initiative.

HMS News: For Our Merchants [2023 Update]

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Today The Official Merchant Services Blog is just going to offer a quick update on some services Host Merchant Services provides directly for its current customers. Today our site launched a page for our current merchants to go to in order to access online assistance services. There are currently two:

TRUPCI

We’ve pushed our PCI Compliance Initiative for quite some time now. Host Merchant Services goal is to make it easy for our customers to stay PCI Compliant. The details of the PCI Compliance Initiative are:

A Free PCI Compliance Analysis of your business by HMS.
A Free PCI Compliance Scan.
A report compiled for your business regarding its PCI Compliance issues and what it needs to do to become PCI Compliant.
All totaled, this is a suite of services with a $100 value that you get at no extra cost.

And finally we’ve gotten great results from the program. For our current merchants who wish to roll up their sleeves and get into the process with us step-by-step, they can go to their TRUPCI assistant.

LOGIN HERE

Additional Resources

If you choose to process with HMS, we will also walk you through the entire procedure step by step, making PCI Compliance an easy and hassle free operation for you.

You can also access our PCI Compliance FAQ here.
And read our step by step guide to becoming PCI Compliant as a level 4 Merchant (the most common level used for PCI Compliance).

Host Merchant Services knows that your business needs secure transactions to function. And we’re here to make the process of PCI Compliance easy, understandable and consistent for you each year.

In House Gateway

We’ve also been pushing our custom designed E-Commerce packages. And part of that offer includes the in-house payment gateway that lets you run your transactions completely online.

To access the Host Merchant Services in-house Payment Gateway:

LOGIN HERE

Industry Terms: Virtual Terminal

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This is the latest installment in The Official Merchant Services Blog’s Knowledge Base effort. Well we want to make the payment processing industry’s terms and buzzwords clear. We want to remove any and all confusion merchants might have about how the industry works. Host Merchant Services promises: the company delivers personal service and clarity. So we’re going to take some time to explain how everything works. This ongoing series is where we define industry related terms and slowly build up a knowledge base and as we get more and more of these completed, we’ll collect them in our resource archive for quick and easy access. Today’s term is:

Virtual Terminal

A Virtual Terminal is a form of secure online payment processing. Using these web-based applications to create a virtual terminal, a merchant can access over an interject connection all the needed credit card processing capabilities from any computer through a secure, password-protected login.

After logging into the environment, a merchant can manually enter credit card details and perform any credit card processing transaction that a Point-of-Sale Terminal would perform, including authorization, capture and refund.

The process looks a lot like going to a secure web site. It’s flexible and can be used from a variety of locations allowing a merchant to either replace their standard terminals or use this as an option for when they’re out in the field. Virtual Terminals are very easy to use, accessed via Secure Socket Layer Encryption (SSL), enable separate authorization and settlement transactions, connect to Address Verification System (AVS) and Card Verification Value (CVV) fraud tests and support multi-user access with multiple permissions. In short, you can run your entire payment processing protocol through a virtual terminal safely and securely.

For more information, you can review how the process works at this link.

You can also find out more about the virtual terminals Host Merchant Services offers at this link.

Merchant Services: Batch Processing

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As part of an ongoing series covering the basics of payment processing, The Official Merchant Services Blog is going to discuss Batch Processing today. You may have seen the term come up before –– possibly in reference to your statement or when your merchant account representative first met you.

What is Batch Processing?

Providing quick and efficient service is key to a successful enterprise. This is also applicable to the process of accepting credit card payments as processing your transactions quickly will also ensure prompt and timely receipt of payments for your products. And that’s where Batch Processing comes in.

Batch processing is the mass processing of dozens of credit card transactions. It tends to be much more convenient to batch process hundred of orders at a certain time during the day, instead of each and every time they are received. A lot of merchants process their batch at the end of business. E-commerce businesses have batch processing built into their payment gateways. In fact, Step Five of our “How Payment Gateways Work” graphic details the daily “batch.” In fact, using a payment gateway will help simplify your batch credit card processing as it will help you coordinate the many functions that are necessary to process your payments. This form of card processing also has the benefit of being secure and this will certainly be a value added to your customer service.

How does Batch Processing Work?

Here’s an infographic that explains the batch process as it happens:

Batch credit card processing works well with small businesses where several credit card transactions are processed simultaneously, in the batch. With this, there is a definite lower risk of credit card fraud and you will be able to offer your customer and your business the assurance of transaction security.

The one con to Batch Processing

On occasions where there is a problem with the credit card payment, the seller may not know till the next day. Batches get processed with a lag. Host Merchant Services has 2 day processing. So there can be some issues with payments due to that lag. But the company has a qualified representative available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, to help you with any issues you encounter in processing your transactions.

Payment Gateways Part 3: Cost Comparison

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The Official Merchant Services Blog completes its three-part series on Payment Gateways. Today’s installment discusses the pricing structure of Payment Gateways and takes a detailed look at the pricing options for the Payment Gateway Solutions that Host Merchant Services offers.

What Are the Costs of Payment Gateways?

The costs that you will have to pay for a Payment Gateway break down like this:

Discount Rate
Monthly Fees
Per Transaction Fees
Setup Fee

Discount Rate

A discount rate is the percentage of each transaction that you pay to your card processor for processing your credit card sales. These fees are largely influenced by the percentage that MasterCard and Visa charge processors. Discount rates are usually in the 2-6% range, but do vary greatly depending on the payment gateway/merchant account specifics that you choose.

With Host Merchant Services, you do not have to pay a discount rate for any of their Payment Gateway Solutions.

Monthly Fees

Typically Payment Gateways that require a merchant account charge a monthly fee. It is part of the merchant account application process, and the prices can vary depending on what add-on services you may choose with your account. A very popular add-on feature, for example, is fraud detection. With many Payment Gateways, the merchant is offered a number of tools to help guard against fraud, such as filters to define the scope of people or places you receive payments from. Authorize.net, one of the Payment Gateway solutions Host Merchant Services offers, has an Advanced Fraud Detection suite available. These types of tools can help reduce chargebacks.

Per Transaction Fees

Most Payment Gateways charge fees for each transaction you process. This fee is usually a flat fee and under $0.50 per transaction. There is some variance in how much that fee can be. For example, the Authorize.net option that Host Merchant Services provides with its Merchant Accounts only has a 5 cents per transaction fee. And the HMSExpress option that Host Merchant Services provides is rare in that it has no added frees for individual transactions.

Setup Fee

A lot of Payment Gateway options also charge a one-time setup fee. Host Merchant Services, however, does not charge a setup fee for its Payment Gateway solutions with its Merchant Accounts.

So that’s an overview of the fees that are involved with Payment Gateways. Lined up together like that you get a picture of what the cost of convenience and security could be for your online business. You also see that Host Merchant Services strives to offer competitive rates with less fees than other Merchant Account providers.

Host Merchant Services offers two basic Payment Gateway options: Authorize.net, and HMSExpress. Authorize.net, which is one of the three largest Payment Gateways offered, costs HMS Merchants a base fee of $10.00 a month and 5 cents per transaction. HMSExpress, the new virtual terminal solution that HMS offers, costs its merchants $10 a month and has no added fees for individual transactions.

What Criteria Should Merchants Consider when Choosing?

Here are some factors merchants need to consider when choosing a Payment Gateway. Keep in mind that the overall goal is to find what works for your business, so don’t let this decision overwhelm you.

How many transactions to you expect to process per month?

If you expect a low volume of online payments each month, then you would want to consider avoiding monthly fees and a high setup cost, as it will take you longer to turn a profit.

Do you plan to utilize auto-billing?

If your business has a need for storing your customers’ payment information, and you need to charge them on a recurring basis, then you need to make sure that you choose a Payment Gateway that gives you this option.

How international is your business?

If your business plans on processing payments from all over the world, you need to choose a Payment Gateway that allows you to do so. Not all options out there can handle international currencies smoothly and seamlessly.

Don’t forget support.

Technical support and customer support are something you can’t overlook when choosing your Payment Gateway. After considering the costs and the setup, the issue of support becomes paramount for the long-term viability of your processing capabilities. When things go wrong, or when there are issues with chargebacks and fraud, you want a Merchant Services provider to be readily available to assist you. With Host Merchant Services, you get 24x7x365 support available to you. The company has its own fraud prevention specialists available to assist you above and beyond what the payment gateway add-ons can provide. And most importantly, when you call in with a problem you get to talk to a person instead of being routed through a phone-tree maze.

The Choice is Yours

As a merchant you want to find the best service tempered by the most affordable rates, when it comes to your Payment Gateway options. It’s important to consider how important the ability to take online payments can be for your business. It opens you up to a wider customer base. It also gives you fast, secure transaction processing. Feel free to shop around and compare the options available to you, and keep in mind that Host Merchant Services provides Payment Gateway solutions with its Merchant Accounts that have less fees than a lot of the other choices you will come across.

Payment Gateways Part 2: How They Work

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The Official Merchant Services Blog continues its series on Payment Gateways. Yesterday’s blog dealt with the basic question of why your business would want a Payment Gateway in the first place. It also looked at the basic setup and costs of a Payment Gateway and some of the differences in the Payment Gateway options that Host Merchant Services offers.

Today’s blog is going to examine how Payment Gateways work.

How Do They Work?

A Payment Gateway is literally a link between a merchant, the client, the client’s credit card provider and the merchant’s bank. The main job of the gateway is to validate your customer’s credit card securely, make sure the funds are available and get you paid. The system is based on the transaction process you see in your standard retail store, where a credit card is swiped. But it does not require a card to be present to be charged.

Some gateways also require a merchant account –– a specific type of bank account that handles your funds received via credit cards. Host Merchant Services provides its merchants with Payment Gateway options as part of the services that come with opening a merchant account through the company.

Host Merchant Services has created an easy to read, step by step graphic on Payment Gateways. You can view that graphic here.

But to briefly walk you through the process:

1.A customer places an order on a merchant’s website and submits the order through the site.
The website then encrypts the payment information that is to be sent between the browser and the merchant’s webserver. This is done vial Secure Socket Layer (SSL) Encryption.
The merchant then forwards the encrypted transaction details to their payment gateway.
The Payment Gateway forwards the secure transaction information to the payment processor (in this instance, Host Merchant Services).
The processor forwards the information to the card association (be it Visa or MasterCard or Discover).
The credit card issuing bank receives the authorization request and sends a response back to the processor with a response code.
This response gets forwarded to the Payment Gateway.
The Payment Gateway sends the response back to the website where it is interpreted and relayed back to the cardholder and the merchant. This entire process of forwarding the information for a response, and getting the response back takes 2 to 3 seconds typically. Not only will the response of approved or declined be generated but the process also defines why a transaction might fail, and lists the reason.
For an approved transaction, the Merchant then submits all of their approved transactions in a “batch” to the acquiring bank for settlement at the end of its business day. The acquiring bank deposits the total of the approved funds into the merchant’s account. Settlement of “batches” typically takes 2 days with Host Merchant Services.

How Do The Transactions Stay Secure?

The security of these transactions are important. Security is the key reason Payment Gateways exist, as the entire point of the system is to get sensitive payment information transmitted from a customer’s web browser back and forth to a bank for approval of the purchase. Here are some of the technical details that happen with Payment Gateways to ensure the process remains secure:

Since the customer is usually required to enter personal details in the transaction process, the payment gateway is often carried out through HTTPS protocol.
To validate the request of the payment page result, signed request is often used – which is the result of the hash function in which the parameters of an application confirmed by a «secret word», known only to the merchant and payment gateway.
To validate the request of the payment page result, sometimes IP of the requesting server has to be verified.
There is a growing support by acquirers, issuers and subsequently by payment gateways for Virtual Payer Authentication (VPA), implemented as 3-D Secure protocol – branded as Verified by VISA, MasterCard SecureCode and J/Secure by JCB, which adds additional layer of security for online payments. 3-D Secure promises to alleviate some of the problems facing online merchants, like the inherent distance between the seller and the buyer, and the inability of the first to easily confirm the identity of the second.

Up Next

In tomorrow’s entry in this series we will take a look at the costs of a Payment Gateway, specifically the options Host Merchant Services offers and then analyze some of the criteria a merchant needs to consider when choosing a Payment Gateway.

Payment Gateways: How They Help Your Business

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The Official Merchant Services Blog delves into Payment Gateways today. We’re going to examine the pros that exist for businesses in using Payment Gateways to establish an online business presence and accept online payments. We also detail some of the basic questions you want to ask yourself about e-commerce, why you want an e-commerce presence for your business, and how much the two Host Merchant Services Payment Gateway options cost.

Why Do I Want To Start Collecting Online Payments In the First Place?

The easiest answer is that it opens up a new market for you and improves your cash-flow.

Online payments give you the ability to accept credit cards through a Payment Gateway itself, or through a third-party add-on, without a lot of trouble or delay. Your clients can pay you quickly with a credit card transaction and the money is in your bank fast.

This increases your cash-flow. You no longer need to wait for a physical check to show up in the mail, then spend time depositing that check in the bank, and then waiting days for the check to clear before you can access the money.

Accepting online payments also opens your business up to a wider potential customer base. Beyond just the local draw your brick and mortar business can attract, the ability to set up an effective e-commerce business lets you reach out to customers far away. Online shopping, especially as we close in on the holiday shopping season, is booming. And virtual shopping options for your website (e-commerce solutions) all hinge on having a way to process payments through your website. In short, to cash in on the online shopping potential your business has, you need a payment gateway in place to process those transactions.

Also, accepting online payments allows you the ability to charge your client’s credit card on a recurring basis (for monthly, quarterly or annual services). This process can be automated, making recurring revenue streams a reliable and predictable source of income.

What are the Costs of Using Payment Gateways?

Most Payment Gateways charge a base monthly fee as well as a “discount rate” for each sale (usually 2-4% of the sale). Monthly fees are generally charged for premium options that can include added support, personal branding for your business and other miscellaneous functions.

When analyzing your options, you want to balance the costs of the services against the additional value these services bring to you and your business. One basic way to evaluate the cost of even having a payment gateway is: What is it worth to you to get paid faster for online transactions than you do for check transactions? What is it worth to your business to be able to process more transactions during the holiday season because you can attract business from all over the country?

Questions like that are what you have to consider when you decide if you want your business to transition to an online one. In our next part of the series, we’re going to get into the details of how Payment Gateways work and see what other questions you have to consider when trying to decide which Payment Gateway to use.

Advantages of Online Credit Card Processing

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The e-commerce industry’s existence hinges on thriving and healthy online credit card processing. People who own businesses today utilize online payment gateways and online credit card processing because of an increasing number of consumers that shop online and own credit cards. Here are some points outlining the advantages of obtaining online credit card services like those you can find at Host Merchant Services: Continue reading →

Tag Archives: payment gateway

Host Merchant Services and Certified Hosting Announce Partnership

Industry Terms: Payment Gateway

Payment Gateway

HMS News: For Our Merchants [2023 Update]

TRUPCI

LOGIN HERE

Additional Resources

In House Gateway

Industry Terms: Virtual Terminal

Virtual Terminal

Merchant Services: Batch Processing

Payment Gateways Part 3: Cost Comparison

Payment Gateways Part 2: How They Work

Payment Gateways: How They Help Your Business

Advantages of Online Credit Card Processing

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