As was discussed in the PCI compliance post made the other week, small businesses which operate primarily online don’t necessarily have the capital necessary to achieve the minimal level of security that a PCI certification demands. As without this they are not legally permitted to collect card details, it is a massive problem. In instances like this a payment gateway is a valid solution for businesses of any size.

Payment gateways may not be a concept everybody is familiar with, but it is actually very important to maintaining and achieving higher levels of security online.Payment gateways are services which businesses can use with their websites, whereby customers are directed as part of the payment process to the actual collector of the information. This means that the information is never in the hands of the smaller business, and the customer is instead handed off to a company with a far bigger online security budget to manage the payment.