As a high-risk merchant, no doubt you’re used to having to overcome many challenges to process payments for your products. We’ve had plenty of clients over the years who’ve been very surprised to discover the number of options we have. The fact that you can choose your own payment gateway, regardless of your processor, is one of those surprises.

At Blue Payment Agency, we focus on offering “gateway only” accounts in addition to payment gateway and merchant account combinations. Today, we want to help you realize that you have more freedom than you think. You can most likely choose a high-risk friendly payment gateway that works better for you. In order to do this, we’ll explain a few different payment elements. Hopefully, that will help you get a better grasp of how this all fits together.

Learn the difference between a merchant account and a gateway

When it comes to online payment processing, it’s easy to get lost between terms. It happens to the best of us. This is why it’s often quite useful to go over the basics to make other topics clearer. For you to get a better understanding of how you can choose your own payment gateway, it’s essential that you can easily distinguish between a merchant account and a gateway.

A merchant account, or credit card processor, is essentially where payments process. It’s your financial home base that facilitates the transfer of funds from your customer’s credit or debit card to your business checking account. However, it’s not the same as your business’ checking account. Your merchant account funds settle directly into your primary business bank account.

A payment gateway, or simply a gateway, is what connects the various cogs in the machinery. It connects your website’s shopping cart with the processor. The gateway allows for seamless transactions and information exchange and for transmitting data to your merchant account. It also simplifies the secure, PCI compliant storage, of cardholder data so you can process card of file billings, upsells, recurring billing plans and refunds.

What is a “gateway only” account

We now know that the relationship between the gateway and the merchant account is important and ties together. The question you might be asking yourself now is, “what is a “gateway only” account? You just informed me that I need both a merchant account and a gateway.”

Services like a “gateway only” accounts exist because, for the most part, most processors/merchant account providers allow you to set up an independent gateway. Only a few do not support separate payment gateways.

When you first set up your merchant account and prepare for online credit card processing, your merchant account provider will likely set up your gateway. However, you are often still free to choose to have an independent gateway set up. This is where the “gateway only” services, like the “gateway only” accounts we offer, are so useful.

The value of choosing your own payment gateway

There are many reasons why you might want to choose your own payment gateway. Among them is the fact that various platforms might not work for the gateway you currently have.

By choosing your gateway, more doors are opened for you, and you have more options available.

You may be able to use a different CRM that works better for your business type. Maybe the CRM you’re using works best with NMI, and your processor doesn’t work with NMI. This type of processing improvement can make a world of difference in your everyday life while owning and running your high-risk online business.

Another great benefit of choosing your own gateway is that you get to control your data.

In an ideal world, we’d like to set up our processor and gateway once, never touch it again, and have it work smoothly. However, if you do end up changing something down the line, being able to control your own data is extremely useful and valuable.

When you choose your payment gateway and set it up independently using Blue Payment Agency, you’ll be able to keep all of your stored customer information. In other words, if you decide to switch merchant accounts, for example, you can keep repeat customer information, and you’ll be able to continue your recurring billing without the complications you’d face otherwise.

You’re in charge – with an independent gateway.

We want to help you get better control and have more options available to your business. Let Blue Payment Agency help you control your data.

You can manage multiple ventures through one gateway

Many who run high-risk online businesses operate more than one e-commerce site at a time. This can be challenging, with multiple gateways and multiple merchant accounts.

This is one of the many reasons why we’re big champions of NMI. It allows you to add multiple businesses to one gateway log-in, even if those businesses have different merchant accounts. The NMI ATRI feature can even help you route transactions much more easily. It makes having multiple merchant accounts a lot more manageable over time. This will save you time, effort, and headaches.

Choosing your own payment gateway and controlling it is essential for high-risk businesses across industries, such as supplements, coaching, and internet affiliate marketing. With our expertise and experience, we’re very well equipped to handle the process and help you set up your NMI account and integrate it with your merchant accounts.

Enjoy the benefits you’ll get when you choose your own payment gateway

As you can tell, there are a considerable number of benefits you can enjoy once you choose your own payment gateway. On a closing note, we want to mention that using us allows ClickFunnels users to integrate their existing merchant accounts with ClickFunnels. We’ve worked closely with ClickFunnels, and we’ve helped many clients in the past successfully set up with them. We do all the heavy lifting, and all we need from you is a VAR.

If you’re ready to take advantage of the benefits of choosing your gateway, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us here. You can also give us a call at 844-253-9769.

We look forward to helping you and your high-risk business with your processing needs.

When you’re selling high-risk products online, there are often challenges you need to overcome before you can comfortably grow your business.

The uncertainty surrounding payment gateways and integrations can feel very restrictive and is a real frustration for many high-risk site owners looking for more custom payment applications for their site development. However, you can get the processing freedom and flexibility you’re looking for with NMI and their well thought out APIs.

At Blue Payment Agency, we’ve successfully helped countless high-risk merchants set up a new payment gateway with NMI. The reason we devote so much time to NMI, and why we became an official NMI reseller, is because NMI offers unique processing solutions. Better yet, you’ll get a unique sense of freedom and flexibility when setting up NMI’s APIs.

A quick definition of API & SDK

Before we go through the great APIs that NMI has to offer, it’s useful to quickly run through exactly what an API is. Additionally, we will also spend a little time going through SDK’s (as they’re often confused with APIs).

What is an API as it relates to payment gateways?

API is an abbreviation of the term “Application Programming Interface.” Essentially, an API is a clearly defined method of communication between different components. It allows you to build software and, crucially, for two software systems to communicate with each other. At its core, an API is a set of communication protocols, subroutine definitions, and tools. These “APIs allow a custom site or software system to “talk” to an established payment gateway.

What is an SDK then?

A “Software Development Kit,” or devkit, is closer to a complete software package. It can be anything from a software framework, operating system, computer system, or other development platforms. The kit allows you to create systems and develop applications and basically provides a framework platform to perform multiple tasks.

A quick explanation of the difference between an API and an SDK

In the simplest of terms, an SDK is a kit or package allowing developers to build systems and applications. It also includes instructions on how to achieve this. In contrast, APIs are highly specialized and created for an express purpose – to allow two or more systems or applications to communicate/interact with each other.

NMI has 7 APIs to work with

NMI has seven purpose-built APIs with pre-defined uses that allow you to integrate a piece of software with their payment gateway. In the case of high-risk e-commerce sites, NMI provides you with seven different ways to complete transactions.

The classic API, Direct Post:

While the Direct Post method API is the most straightforward integration method, it might be better suited for medium to large businesses. This is because, often, the brunt of PCI compliance will be on your end when using this integration method. In short, if you use this standard API, make sure you have passed a PCI vulnerability scan first.

Three Step Redirect API: fantastic at making PCI compliance easier

In contrast to the Direct Post API, the Three Step Redirect API is excellent in terms of making PCI compliance more simple. It’s the preferred API for custom web-based payment processing as it achieves two things:

1. Lessens your PCI footprint
2. Maintains a high-end look and feel.

Add this to the fact that it’s the required method for using Verified by Visa/Mastercard SecureCode (Payer Authentication), and you have an excellent API for high-risk e-commerce.

Great for automatically pulling reports from NMI, Query API:

As we mentioned, APIs are niche, purpose-built functions, and the NMI Query API very much fits the bill. It allows you to easily download and automatically import transaction data that you can use for in-house reporting, fulfillment, and analytics.

Mobile API for Android and Apple, Mobile SDK:

For many retail merchants, the value of NMI’s Mobile SDK cannot be understated.  The devkit includes a mobile card reader library that makes applications requiring encrypted mobile card readers work smoothly. It also allows you to send keyed-in and swiped payment information without interacting with sensitive data by using its end-to-end encryption library. The Mobile SDK supports both iOS and Android.

Easy Paste HTML Code for Hosted Payment Pages, QuickClick:

Although arguably not a true API, the QuickClick NMI integration is a fantastic solution for smaller high-risk sites that don’t have an IT or dev team on hand. It’s a simple copy-paste of HTML that also includes a button generator. It will allow you to easily create straightforward links to services and products without needing any development knowledge or experience. QuickClick can be a workaround solution for site builders with limited high-risk integration such as Wix, and GoDaddy GoCentral.

Updated API now works with JavaScript instead of PHP, Collect.JS:

Collect.JS is a very intelligent solution that takes full advantage of tokenization. Some of you might be familiar with “tokens” – if not, here is a quick summary of what the Collect.js does: it securely captures payment data from a popup form and generates a “token.” This is in turn used with the Direct Post API (discussed above). The great thing about this is that it replaces raw credit card or bank account data with a token. The icing on the cake is that no payment information goes through your site. The gateway technically hosts the popup form. As a result, you minimize your PCI-compliance footprint without sacrificing much in terms of customer experience or consistency.

Use Auth Net API with new post URL: Gateway Emulator:

The Gateway Emulator from NMI is another excellent application programming interface. The name gives away its function – it allows you to emulate a different gateway interface while using NMI. It’s important to note that to use the Gateway Emulator, your shopping cart needs to support the Authorize.Net AIM or SIM integration method. This is because the AIM or SIM allows you to change the transaction post URL to the Gateway Emulator URL. This will enable you to send a specific transaction through to the NMI secure servers as opposed to Authorize.Net’s while keeping pre-written software solutions in place.

Want help getting the most out of NMI’s APIs?

At Blue Payment Agency, we help high-risk merchants with their NMI needs. As an official NMI reseller, we have the experience and expertise to help you get the very best out of the NMI payment gateway and recommend the APIs that offer the most value to you.

If you’re a high-risk merchant and want to start using NMI today, contact us here or give us a call at 844-253-9769. We look forward to helping you get the freedom and flexibility that NMI and its APIs have to offer!

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