If you already know what payment gateways do, then please check our Payment Gateway List to see what's best for you.

If you'd like to learn about payment gateways & merchant accounts from the ground up, here's a Complete Description by one of our founders.

To get a payment gateway & merchant account, please contact one of our Partners and they will help you choose the best options for your business.

Once you have a payment gateway, set up your gateway credentials.

Before you can run credit card transactions with real credit card numbers (whether real or test transactions), you will need a Payment Gateway account from a supported gateway.

Do I need "Customer Information Manager" ("CIM") or "Payment Profile" or "Data Vault" feature?

Yes!

In order to securely store your customer credit card data in a 100% PCI-compliant environment, Chargify utilizes the gateway's "customer information manager" or "payment profile" or "data vault" feature.

When signing up for a gateway, please be sure to ask for this to be enabled on your account. (For Authorize.net, ask for "CIM".) In most cases, this feature will have an additional cost but will provide you with the peace of mind that your customer data is stored securely.

Please note with Authorize.net... if you just added CIM recently (like within the last 24 hours), it may not work yet. We have seen several merchants report that things just started working fine about 24 hours after turning on the CIM option in Authorize.net.

Do I need Recurring Billing (called "ARB" at Authorize.net) enabled on my account?

No.

Chargify replaces the need for recurring solutions, such as "ARB", at the gateway level. We calculate the recurring schedules and perform the transactions without the use of a gateway's recurring features. We provide many features that ARB cannot, such as metered-usage billing, discount coupon codes, reaching out to customers when cards are declined, etc.

Can I run test transactions before I have a gateway account?

Yes.

Choose 'Test Gateway' from Site Settings. This allows you to test your system using the following dummy credit card numbers instead of full 16-digit numbers:

"1" (to generate a successful outcome, as if the card was charged successfully) "2" (to generate an unsuccessful outcome, as if the card was declined for the charge).

Can I run test transactions against my gateway?

Yes.

To do so, ask your gateway provider for a test account.

In the case of Authorize.net, be sure to get a "developer account". You can sign up online. **

Enter the test credentials you are provided into your Chargify "test site" settings.

Do not use these credentials for a Chargify production site.

What will I need to run transactions in Production?

You will need a "live" gateway to integrate with your Chargify production site. These credentials differ from your test credentials.

Please note that some gateways will not provide an error if you use production credentials on a test site within Chargify; be sure the appropriate credentials are entered into your site settings.

** Authorize.net "live" accounts have a 'test mode' feature. It is strongly recommended that you do not use 'test mode.' Please register for a developer test account instead.