You might have come across a lot of online stores that offer attractive discounts on your favorite products. If you have a credit card, you can easily purchase the products without any hassle. One of the easiest and most secure payment options available today is the credit card. It's said to be secured as you will not lose money from your account instantly after placing the order as the payment cycle will be on a different date. You can call up the credit card issuing company and report any issues if you are not happy with the placed order. If you use a debit card to purchase a product online you will get money immediately subtracted from your account. In case of any discrepancies, you will have to face a lot of trouble to get the money back. This is one major advantage provided by credit cards.

Credit card payments take place in two phases. The first phase is called authorization and the second settlement. During the authorization phase, the details entered at the payment gateway are verified. You will have to enter details like name, credit card number, expiry date etc. which will be cross checked by the payment provider. The payment gateway will communicate with the bank servers to get this verified. The card will also be checked for availability of credit. If the customer has exceeded the credit limit, the transaction is denied.  In case of a physical store, merchants just have to swipe the credit card at the payment terminal to initiate the process. You need not enter the credit card details on the payment terminal like you do at online stores. Be it an online payment terminal or a swiping machine at the retail counter, the method of processing credit card payments is the same, just the interface differs. At online stores, you have to enter the credit card details manually whereas at retail stores, the card is swiped in the machine.

Once the payment goes through without any problem, the customer will receive an order confirmation. The payment page is encrypted using secure socket layer to ensure security. After the payment is processed, the fund is transferred from the customer's account to the merchant's account. This process will take a couple of days to get completed. This is not made instant to make sure that the customer has the time to sign disputes if any issue occurs while using the card. This is hence the most used payment method by people around the world while shopping online. The same principle is used even while swiping to make credit card payments at merchant terminals. Instead of an order confirmation, the customer will receive a receipt during this transaction.

If you own an online store and are trying to set up credit card payments option, you should do adequate research and choose a good provider. With an excellent provider of credit card payment solutions, you will be able to accept card payments with ease using the services. The provider will also help to avoid fraudulent transactions to a great extent. All measures are taken to avoid unauthorized transactions in the online payment gateways in order to stay good in business. This is possible when a good service provider is used to accept payments. The customers would have to enter passwords to confirm their identity as an extra security procedure while using the services of good providers. This will help to reduce unauthorized access of card centric data.