Secrets of Successful Payment Gateway Integration in Mobile Application

• What is Payment Gateway Integration?
• How Payment Gateway Integration Works?
• Benefits of Payment Gateway Integration
• List of Top Payment Gateways and their Features
• How to Integrate Payment Gateway to iOS & Android App?

A payment gateway is a service of performing electronic transactions to receive or transfer money from the end customer’s account to the merchant. It is used for payment authorization. Payment gateway integration in the mobile application (iOS or Android) ensures that businesses can accept payment more simply and quickly. It serves as an intermediary portal that facilitates successful transaction flow by making use of security protocols and industry-standard encryption to manage and transfer transaction data safely.

Step 1:
Customer places the order by submitting preference and clicking the “Buy now” button or equivalent options.

Step 2:
The online store redirects the consumer to a payment gateway to enter all the relevant credentials about the bank or the card.

Step 3:
The gateway helps;

• Forward the transaction data to the acquiring bank (the acquirer or merchant bank ~ institution dealing in commercial loans and investment.)
• Identifies credit card provider (MasterCard, Discover, Visa, or American Express)
• Routes the transaction information to the right payment switch

Step 4.1:
The issuer bank (a financial firm that provides credit and debit cards to customers) applies fraud detection procedures to check the authenticity of the transaction. It confirms whether the buyer has enough credit in their account to facilitate the procurement.

Step 4.2:
The issuer bank either accepts or rejects the payment request and transfers this information back via the credit card network to the payment gateway and the merchant bank. The response code helps to communicate the cause of a failed transaction, for instance, insufficient funds, and others.

The customer gets a confirmation as a message via a payment system interface of the order being placed, once the above process is complete before they even realize – within a fraction of few seconds. How about that?

Let’s look at some reasons why and how utilizing integrated payments can provide an edge to your business and offer a competitive edge.

Easy and Quick Checkouts

• Rapid and seamless checkout with only a few clicks makes the customer shopping experience much more convenient and time-efficient.
• Increased flexibility to pay anytime from anywhere

Secure Transactions

• Payment gateways utilize industry-standard encryption and compliant data protection with Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), thereby protecting both merchants and customers from fraud.
• Enhanced data security boosts customer satisfaction and minimizes hassles in online transactions.

Global Reach

• The online payment gateway integration enables organizations around the world to get access to business and manage global transactions.
• It comprises features such as multi-currency, multi-language functionality, supplementary cross-border fees, local regulations, and foreign exchange charges.

24/7 Access Convenience

• Integrating business with payment gateway enables 24×7 access to business offering – at any hour of the day or night irrespective of the consumer’s location & time difference.

Now that we have established what is payment gateway integration and the benefits it offers, it’s time to visit some real-life popular payment gateways and investigate their peculiarities, facts & features.

PayPal: Launched in 1998, it is a redirect-gateway that is encrypted with high-security features that protect both buyer and merchant’s data with more than 300 million user accounts across the globe.

Stripe: Active since 2011, it is a cloud payment gateway platform exclusively created for eCommerce business with purchase processing in more than 135 currencies and even deals with Bitcoin

Authorize.NET: In operations since 1996, it is designed to serve small-to-medium-sized businesses and trusted by more than 445 million users across the world and manages over 1 billion transactions every year.

Amazon Pay: Launched in 2007 by Amazon, it is a fairly popular payment processing service that supports more than 310 million active customer accounts

Each platform offers unique Software Development Kits (SDKs) and detailed technical documentation on how to integrate payment gateway with mobile apps. We provide custom app development and payment gateway integration services to businesses of all types while helping them match the regulatory compliance and providing an intuitive user-centric experience.

When you’re choosing a service, it is necessary to ensure how it supports the required framework. Implementation details may slightly differ depending on the platforms and development tools used but in general, the process is similar. Learn how we helped a UK-based retailer with a unified platform to streamline the omnichannel experience.

Here’s a step-by-step guide that you might find useful if you don’t know where to begin or how long would it take to make your payment integration work.

Step 1:
Decide on the type of Payment Getaway and plan the integration process: Based on the size of business, industry & country targeted to determine which payment gateway would best suit the needs.

Step 2:
Add Client Tokens: It is necessary to obtain a client token when the server sends a request from your app. It is a good practice to generate a new token on every app launch. It consists of all the authorization and configuration specifics to allow the client to initialize the SDK. This is achieved by using numerous programming languages and frameworks, including JavaScript, React, Java, .NET, PHP, Python, and Ruby on Rails

Step 3:
Testing: Here, software testers verify the working of the payment gateway integration with credentials such as merchant ID, public and private keys.

Step 4:
Security certifications: To increase the level of security it is important to consider installing additional certifications that comply with the PCI-DSS. Further, the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) guarantees protection for the clients’ and merchant’s sensitive information.

Step 5:
Payment Processing: When processing a transaction, the one-time payment method needs to be configured on the server. It works as follows: the client sends you card information, the gateways forward it to the server, and it uses the data to initiate the transaction.