Best approach for an internationalised payment gateway implementation

Question

I'm looking to integrate a payment gateway into a Ruby on Rails applicaton. Although i have already implemented one before im struggling to see how i can implement one which will cater for different countries.

For example, if it was only a UK based app i could use a UK vendor (e.g CardStream), if it was only a US app i could use a US vendor (e.g. BrainTree), but i can't seem to find a vendor that caters for multiple countries.

I'm concerned that i am going to have to have both a UK gateway and a US gateway running alongside each other in the same application. Surely this is not the case and im missing something entirely?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Elizabeth nailed it. A Payment Service Provider has to go through accreditation with every acquiring bank that they want to perform authorization/settlement with. In the UK for example the main ones would be Barclays, Streamline, FirstData, HSBC, Amex, Diners. There are costs and considerable time investments for each accreditation.

I've never developed for acquirers in the US, but I imagine there are a good number. Rinse and repeat for acquirers in other countries and you see it soon adds up.

PA-DSS and PCI-DSS requirements are 'global', so once certified there its not too bad.

You could just go with a UK provider and have your clients setup a receiving bank account in the UK? All providers will perform multi-currency authorisation and settlement, so its a pretty standard setup. We've developed for US clients using this system.

Answer 2

My first answer was wrong, so I'm deleting it. (I hit the delete button, apparently you vote to delete).

Magento is an ecommerce solution that supports multiple currency, internationalization, and different tax rates. We've used it before for Versatile Hangars. The base locale for this site is US, but Magento supports multiple site on one install. I haven't played around with a shared user list between to sites, but I'm sure it could be fudged.

Sorry for the quick answer before. I hope this works for you.

Answer 3

Hi joshnesbitt

There are actually quite a few PSPs and/or acquirers who support both the US and Europe. Most of these will have various flavours of API such as XML or SOAP. Check out Chase Paymentech Europe dot com.

Best regards

Steve