When anyone sets out to work at home with an online business, they need to think about how they are going to get paid. You see, unlike a traditional business which your customers would walk into, pick up the items which they want to purchase, and hand you their credit card, you do not have this option when you work at home with an online business. Therefore, you are going to need what is known as a payment gateway.

A payment gateway is just as it sounds. It is a gateway from your website which a buyer clicks on the “Complete Sale” button, to your merchant account. This gateway gives you the capacity to accept both credit cards and checks on your website within seconds.

One of the most assuring features of the payment gateway is its security. We all know that the world is full of identity theft. This is rampant in people’s minds. Hence, a reputable payment gateway will encrypt your customers’ credit card numbers and other sensitive information on its way to your merchant account. After the transaction is either accepted or declined, it will send an authorization number back to the payment gateway. This whole process takes less than three seconds. Thereafter, your merchant account will transmit your approved transactions to the issuing bank, and payment is deposited in your business account generally within 2-3 business days.

Now I am convinced, and want to know how I can get a payment gateway for my website. Well, this is actually fairly simple, as there are several companies which offer this service. Furthermore, there are some services which offer additional fraud filters which allow you to set the parameters. For anyone who sells items online as a means to work at home, I strongly suggest that you obtain such software.

Additionally, many payment gateways allow you to take orders over the phone, and type in the customer’s credit card information manually. You simply log into your merchant account, and enter the order manually over the Internet. This is helpful since the last thing that you want to do if a customer calls and is ready to order is steer them back to your website. Rather, you want to close the sale on the spot.

As we have been discussing, there are several companies who offer gateways subscriptions to business owners. Shop around and compare prices, then select the best option for your work at home business.

by Brian Lett