The electronic payment process may be difficult to understand at first. The diagram below illustrates the flow of payment information and funds from a merchant’s Web site to their bank account.

Step 1: A customer submits a credit card or electronic check transaction to the Authorize.Net Payment Gateway via a secure connection from your Web site.

Step 2: Authorize.Net receives the secure transaction information and passes it via a secure connection to your bank’s processor (a financial partner that provides credit card processing on behalf of the credit card associations, for example, Visa or MasterCard).

Step 3: Your bank’s processor submits the transaction to the Credit Card Interchange (a network of financial entities that communicate to manage the processing, clearing, and settlement of credit card transactions).

Step 4: The Credit Card Interchange routes the transaction to your customer’s Credit Card Issuer.

Step 5: The Credit Card Issuer approves or declines the transaction based on the customer’s available funds and passes the transaction results, and if approved, the appropriate funds, back through the Credit Card Interchange.

Step 6: The Credit Card Interchange relays the transaction results to your bank’s processor.

Step 7: Your bank’s processor relays the transaction results to Authorize.Net.

Step 8: Authorize.Net stores the transaction results and sends them to you and/or your customer. This communication process averages three seconds or less!

Step 9: The Credit Card Interchange passes the appropriate funds for the transaction to your bank, which then deposits funds into your merchant bank account.

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