Credit Card Gateways

CartManager is compatible with most major gateways and checkout options including Google Checkout, eBay, and PayPal. Credit card gateways validate and authorize transactions when you accept credit cards online.

Briefly, the process by which purchases are made online follows this general order:

A customer comes to your web site.
The customer decides to make a purchase and clicks on your shopping cart icon.
The item selected is added to the shopping cart.
When you customer "checks out", they enter their payment information on a secure page.
When they have entered all of the necessary information, it is sent to the credit card gateway service.
The credit card gateway is the one who validates and authorizes the credit card information and distributes this information to the credit card processing network.
Transactions are approved or rejected. If approved, the funds are debited to the customers account and credited to your merchant account.

These are the steps that must be taken in order for your online shopping cart to work. Just having a shopping cart does not complete the system, nor does just having a gateway. This multi-layered approach benefits the customer who makes purchases on your web site and your online business.

It is important to note that credit card gateways also require that you have an SSL secured checkout. One major benefit of using a hosted cart, like CartManager, is that the SSL security is included in our hosted checkout process.