Home → Arctic Reservations → Credit Card Processing → Merchant Services & Gateways
23.1. Merchant Services & Gateways
The credit card processing industry has a somewhat complex structure for legacy reasons, where there are two separate entities that are necessary for processing credit cards. The merchant services company is repsonsible for accepting credit cards, collecting processing fees and making daily (or regular) batch deposits into your bank account. The payment gateway company provides an electronic means of submitting credit card transactions to the merchant services company; in a sense, they are a digital version of the credit card swiping machines that existing in physical retail locations. Because Arctic Reservations performs purely electronic transactions (even when the card is present), you must have both a merchant services company and a payment gateway.
There are a few companies that provide both services together (for example, Stripe is a new startup that provides everything). But traditionally, and often in order to receive the most competitive processing rates, you have to find separate companies to provide both services. That being said, most payment gateways are structured to be sold only through resellers. As a result, your merchant services company can likely help setup your payment gateway and, if they are a larger merchant services company, they can likely get you a discount on the gateway.
Pricing varies, but merchant services companies generally have a monthly fee and a complex fee structure that includes both a fixed and a percentage fee per transaction. Payment gateways do not have a percentage fee, but usually have a small monthly and per transaction fee, after a certain number of included transactions.
Finding a Merchant Services Provider
If you are looking for a potential merchant services company, reach out to support and we will be happy to we can share some feedback we have gotten from our outfitters.
Finding a Payment Gateway
Arctic works with the following payment gateway providers:
- Authorize.Net (recommended in the US)
- Moneris (recommended in Canada)
- Stripe (combined merchant services and payment gateway)
- BluePay
- Payware
For directions on setting up a payment gateway see Step 13 of the "Getting Started Guide".