Gateway

The technical interface that captures card credentials at the merchant's checkout and sends them to the acquirer for processing. Gateways handle tokenization, 3DS step-up, fraud screening, and routing. Some acquirers operate their own gateway; others integrate with third-party gateways such as Cybersource, Spreedly, or Checkout.com.

In practice.

The gateway is the pipe, not the bank: it carries transactions to one or more acquirers and adds tooling such as tokenization, routing and fraud screening. Keeping gateway and acquiring decisions separate is healthy, because a good gateway with the wrong acquirer still means poor approval rates and tough terms.

Related terms: Acquirer · Tokenization · 3D Secure