Payment gateway

The piece of plumbing that carries a card payment from your PMS to the company that actually processes it. The gateway takes the card details, encrypts them and passes them on for authorisation, then returns the answer to your system.

It is easy to confuse the gateway with the processor or merchant account provider, and the difference matters when something is being retired. The processor is who you have the commercial relationship with and who settles money into your bank. The gateway is only the connection. A PMS can stop supporting one gateway while the processor behind it stays a supported partner, which means you may be able to keep your rates and your account and simply reconnect over a different gateway.

Gateways get retired mainly for security reasons. The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) tightens over time, and older integrations that cannot meet it are closed off.

When a gateway is being switched off, the work is not finished once the new connection is live. Scheduled payments and security deposit holds on bookings you already hold run through the old connection too, so those need reassigning before the cutoff date.