A merchant account is a financial institution or bank account used by a merchant specifically for the purpose of collecting proceeds from a consumer bank account or credit card payment transactions.
 

A payment gateway is the infrastructure that enables you to accept credit cards and electronic check payments from websites, terminals or mobile devices. Payment gateways also provide merchants with transaction management, reporting, and billing services.
 

You can use a Card Present (CP) merchant account to receive payments at a physical location where customers physically present a form of payment to you at the time of the transaction.
 

By contrast, a Card Not Present (CNP) merchant account can be used to receive payments electronically (i.e., online payments), or in situations where consumers aren’t physically present at the time of the transaction.

No. A merchant account is a type of bank account that allows businesses to accept payments by payment cards, which are typically debit or credit cards. It’s similar to a credit line for your business to accept payments or issues refunds.
 

A merchant account is unique to you and your business. When you apply, the underwriter will look at your industry, your processing history (if any), your personal credit, your business’ creditworthiness, and other factors. Once approved, your business can start accepting payments.

There are no additional fees beyond the prices noted above. The plan prices automatically include the plan features with the exception of Account Updater and eCheck payments. Account Updater may incur additional costs, and the eCheck plan comes with additional services.
 

The Authorize.net payment gateway does not have a contract or early termination fees.

We offer a variety of payment options ranging from credit cards and digital eChecks to PayPal.

PayPal is not a merchant account. It’s a third-party processor, and it aggregates all of its sellers’ accounts into one large merchant account. Because you are not the sole owner of this account, it cannot be used with the Authorize.net gateway.

Upon proper completion of the application, your Authorize.net Payment Gateway account is approved automatically. However, in order to accept credit cards, you must have a merchant account, and approval for that account can be immediate or take from one to five business days or more depending on several factors, including industry, credit history and responsiveness.
 

If you have an existing merchant account, you can update your gateway with the parameters provided from your merchant provider and be ready to transact within minutes.
 

If you are applying for our "all-in-one" solution where we help to provide you with the merchant account, the approval process could be as quick as one hour if the application is "auto-approved".

The Merchant Service Provider (MSP) facilitates transferring funds to your bank account. Funding time can vary depending on your MSP. The industry average funding period is between three to five business days.

No, the Authorize.net payment gateway does not have a contract fee for early termination.

Once a day, Authorize.net takes all your transactions from the previous 24-hours and aggregates them into a “batch” which is then sent off to the processing networks. The Daily Batch Fee is the fee assessed for this process.

A chargeback is a charge reversal initiated by the cardholder’s bank on behalf of the cardholder.