How to build your own payment gateway from scratch: 5-step guide
February 7, 2024
7 min
Any online business engaged in product or service sales or offering account replenishment options, requires a reliable payment processing software. Fortunately, entrusting online payment processing to a payment gateway solution resolves this need.
In previous articles, we've explained the significance of payment gateway software and its necessity for online businesses. Now let's dig deeper: should companies opt for a ready-made solution or build their own payment gateway infrastructure from scratch?
Why create a custom payment gateway?
Setting up payment acceptance is relatively straightforward for businesses with modest turnovers and a limited range of payment methods. However, challenges often emerge as the business scales. With increased transaction volumes and new payment method integrations, particularly for cross-border transactions. The broader the scale, the more intricacies and demands arise and may not be immediately apparent. In such scenarios, business owners may contemplate a custom payment gateway development.
Pros & cons of a custom payment gateway
Pros
- Tailored integration. After a custom payment gateway software is developed, the owner can seamlessly integrate it with their business's existing systems and infrastructure.
- Enhanced payment gateway security. Custom solutions enable businesses to implement the highest security standards tailored to their specific needs. They include robust encryption protocols and advanced fraud detection measures, minimising the risk of data breaches and fraudulent activities.
- Flexibility and scalability. By developing a payment gateway, businesses can easily customise its features to meet their requirements and adapt to evolving business needs as they grow.
- Control over costs. By creating a payment gateway, businesses have better control over costs compared to using third-party payment processors. They can avoid unnecessary payment processing fees and only pay for the features and services they actually need.
- Competitive advantage. It can differentiate a business from competitors, enhance its brand reputation, and demonstrate a commitment to providing customers with a tailored, secure, and seamless payment experience.
- Regulatory compliance. Building a custom payment gateway allows businesses to ensure compliance with industry-specific regulations and standards, such as PCI DSS. This helps mitigate legal risks and build trust with customers.
- Additional source of income. By owning a payment gateway, a business can become a payment service provider for other merchants. Charging them with registration and transaction fees will provide additional revenue streams.
Overall, a custom payment gateway software development empowers businesses with greater control, security, flexibility, and competitive advantage in the increasingly complex landscape of online payments.
Cons
- Development time. Although building a payment gateway architecture from scratch provides many long-term benefits, it requires a lot of resources. Before you start using your solution, you'll have to spend up to several years on preparations, development, testing, and a lifetime on product maintenance.
- Compliance costs. Processing payments via your payment gateway requires complying with the PCI DSS. The certification procedure is quite long and cost-expensive, but this compliance is strictly required.
Who may need to build a payment gateway solution?
- Online businesses with large turnover;
- Those who want to be independent of third-party payment providers;
- Scaling payment providers;
- IT companies that want to become a PSP;
- Acquiring banks aiming to improve their front-end solution.
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How to create your own payment gateway in 5 steps
Creating your own payment gateway involves several steps to ensure its functionality, security, and compliance with industry standards.
Here's a simplified guide outlining the process in five steps:
- Market research and planning
- Design and development
- Integration and testing
- Compliance and certification
- Deployment and maintenance
Let's delve deeper into each step's details.
Step 1. Market research and planning
- Understand the payment processing landscape, including current trends, technologies, and regulatory requirements.
- Identify your target market, business goals, and selling points to tailor your payment gateway accordingly.
- Conduct market analysis to assess competition, customer needs, and potential challenges within your business model or industry.
Step 2. Design and development
- Define the features and functionalities of your payment gateway based on your research and business objectives.
- You can host your solution on a third-party server or prepare your own. If you opt for the latter, you'll be totally your own boss but with the need to reaffirm your PCI DSS compliance annually. Also, you may opt for AWS as a third-party partner.
- Develop a detailed technical architecture, including database structure, payment processing logic, user interface, and security measures.
- Choose the programming languages, frameworks, and development tools best suited for your project.
- Implement robust encryption protocols, data validation mechanisms, and fraud detection systems to ensure transaction security and compliance with industry standards.
Step 3. Integration and testing
- Integrate your payment gateway with various payment processors, banks, and financial institutions to enable payment acceptance from different sources.
- Conduct rigorous testing to validate your payment gateway's functionality, performance, and security across different devices, browsers, and transaction scenarios.
- Test for compatibility with popular e-commerce platforms, shopping carts, and other third-party integrations.
Step 4. Compliance and certification
- Ensure compliance with industry regulations, such as PCI DSS, GDPR, and local payment processing laws.
- Obtain necessary certifications and approvals from relevant authorities and payment card networks to demonstrate your adherence to security and compliance standards.
- Implement measures for data privacy, customer consent, and dispute resolution to protect both merchants and customers.
Step 5. Deployment and maintenance
- Deploy your payment gateway to production environments and ensure seamless integration with your or your merchants' websites or applications.
- Provide ongoing maintenance and support services to address any issues, update security patches, and add new features as needed.
- Monitor performance metrics, transaction data, and security logs to identify potential issues or vulnerabilities and take proactive measures to mitigate risks.
How to create a payment gateway and make it competitive?
Given the high level of competition in the payment market, your solution must be scalable and comprise a range of features to fulfil clients' needs. These tips will give you a hint on how to maintain competence:
- Provide a range of connections with different payment processors to attract more merchants.
- Allow for flexible customisation to be attractive for various online businesses.
- Ensure reliable customer support to help clients solve even minor issues in a snap.
When creating your secure payment gateway, you must be prepared for high costs. The exact price isn't easy to name, for it depends on various factors, but it can reach hundreds of thousands of euros. This price includes the cost of the development and support team salaries, obtaining a certificate of PSI DSS, documentation, office equipment, etc.
How can Corefy help?
At Corefy, we offer the white label payment provider solution that allows you to get started within a shorter time and with fewer costs – about a salary of 1 developer only. Instead of spending years and hundreds of thousands of euros on your own payment gateway development, you can opt for a ready-made solution. We have developed this holistic payment orchestration platform to enable you to accept payments, make payouts hassle-free, and concentrate on your business performance and development. We also provide full support and maintenance, so you do not have to dive into the technical details.
Do you want to see how our online payment gateway works with your eyes? It's easy – book a live demo.
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