5. What do businesses need?

When a business wants to sell using ecommerce they will need:

  • A domain name for their web site e.g. Amazon.co.uk
  • A website that allows access to all their product
  • A good, friendly navigation system for the site
  • A secure way of taking payment from their customers
  • An automatic way of sending an order confirmation by email
  • A way of sending orders to the customers

The most technically difficult and sensitive item in this list is the 'secure payment'.

example payment gateway

Most businesses are not security experts (nor do they want to be) and so they hire a specialist company to deal with the taking-payment part. They are called a 'payment gateway' vendor.

For a fee, the payment gateway vendor provides the highly secure connections needed to complete the purchase.

For example they enable customers to pay by Visa, Mastercard and other credit \ debit cards.

The business itself does not keep any sensitive details such as credit card numbers on their server - the payment gateway vendor does all that for them.

 

Challenge see if you can find out one extra fact on this topic that we haven't already told you

Click on this link: Payment gateways