What is a payment gateway and how does it work?

An ecommerce payment gateway is a payment gateway designed for online stores. It is a payment gateway for your website or mobile app that accepts digital payments at checkout, routes transactions for authorization, and supports security controls that help protect customer data.

An international payment gateway supports multiple countries and currencies, often with localization features such as local payment methods, region-specific authentication flows, and multi-currency settlement options.

A secure payment gateway typically uses encryption and tokenization to protect payment data and supports authentication and risk controls. The exact security requirements depend on your payment methods, regions, and implementation.

Most teams integrate a payment gateway using APIs or plugins. Using plugins and hosted payment gateways can help you integrate faster. If you have the engineering time to spare, you can also customize the payment gateway experience and embed it directly into your website or app.  

Adyen is the financial technology platform that helps enterprises grow by offering end-to-end payments and financial services in a single global solution. We offer mobile app payment gateways, payment gateways for websites, and in-person payment options. 

We’re a payment gateway, processor, and acquirer in one platform. Since we have everything in one place, we can gather data from all processes and help you make more informed decision-making for higher conversion and authorization rates. We also provide solutions like authentication, risk management, and authentication optimization.

Adyen supports fraud and risk management capabilities that help enterprises detect suspicious activity and tune controls over time. The right setup depends on your business model, markets, and risk appetite.