Payment Gateway Development from A to Z
Having 18 years of experience in payment software development and 20 years in cybersecurity, ScienceSoft delivers reliable and secure payment gateways that help businesses seamlessly accept digital customer payments.
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Payment Gateway Development: Summary
Payment gateway development helps companies introduce custom payment functionality in their web and/or mobile applications and provides an opportunity to unlock new revenue streams.
Custom payment gateways support all required payment methods and currencies, offer advanced security of customer’s personal and payment data, seamlessly integrate with customer-facing apps and payment processing systems, and can be easily evolved with new features.
How to build a payment gateway in 7 steps
- Conduct a feasibility study.
- Design payment gateway software and select the optimal technology stack.
- Establish development and delivery automation environments.
- Develop the back end of a solution, a customer-facing checkout page, and an admin interface.
- Implement a secure database to store the sensitive data provided by customers.
- Run QA procedures in parallel with development to validate the payment gateway’s quality and fix the defects before the gateway is deployed.
- Deploy the solution in production and integrate it with other systems.
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Timelines: 6–11 months on average. Cost: $100,000–$300,000+ for a custom solution. Team: a project manager, a business analyst, a solution architect, a UX/UI designer, a DevOps engineer, a back-end developer, a front-end developer, a QA engineer. |
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With 750+ talents on board, ScienceSoft provides all the necessary skills to cover the end-to-end development of a custom payment gateway and ensure its compliance with relevant security standards.
A Sample Architecture of a Payment Gateway by ScienceSoft
Below, ScienceSoft shares a sample architecture of payment gateways we create, describes essential solution integrations and payment handling flow.
An online payment gateway serves as a bridge that enables instant and secure transfer of a customer’s personal and payment information between an application that hosts a checkout page (e.g., a merchant’s website, a customer portal) and one or several payment processing systems. The latter can be provided by a financial institution (an acquiring bank), independent payment processing providers (e.g., PayPal, Authorize.Net, Stripe, BitPay), or the company (in case of relying on in-house payment processing). The payment gateway verifies sensitive data provided by a customer (purchasing details, billing address, a credit card number, etc.), encrypts and stores it in a secure and compliant storage. Once a payment transaction is authorized in a payment processing system, approved in a payment processing network (e.g., ACH network, a card network, a crypto coin’s network), and settled between the customer’s bank and a company’s bank, a payment gateway automatically communicates payment success or decline to the customer.
A payment gateway integrates with accounting software to instantly transfer data on the successful payments and receive triggers to timely charge due payments (e.g., recurring payments). Additionally, the solution may be connected to a data analytics system to share relevant data required to analyze cash inflow and customer payment behavior.
If you plan to monetize your custom payment gateway by offering it to other companies for a fee, the solution can be equipped with ready-to-use APIs to enable prompt and easy integration with customer-facing apps of the authorized merchants.
If you choose to develop a custom payment gateway, you take full responsibility for achieving compliance with PCI DSS, PA-DSS, PSD2, and other relevant payment data security standards. Here at ScienceSoft, we provide a full scope of financial IT compliance services to ensure your payment gateway processes, stores, and shares sensitive information in accordance with the latest regulatory requirements.
When to Opt for a Custom Payment Gateway
From ScienceSoft’s experience, companies looking to implement payment functionality in their web or mobile application often have doubts about whether they should rely on a market-available payment gateway or build a custom solution. So far, integrating a prebuilt payment gateway remains a more popular option, as it offers a fast and easy way to enable digital payments. However, an OOTB gateway is not always the most economically feasible option. Prebuilt gateways can bring high fees for third-party payment gateway providers’ services. They may also require substantial efforts on customization and establishing smooth integration with the required apps.
ScienceSoft suggests opting for a custom payment gateway in the following cases:
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You need a payment gateway providing specific capabilities, e.g., support for all required payment methods, including crypto payments, sophisticated recurring payments, AI-powered fraud detection, or on-demand scalability to handle the growing amount of payment transactions during peak times. |
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You need a solution that can be easily evolved with new functionality as your business grows or transforms. |
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You want to smoothly and cost-effectively integrate a payment gateway system with your existing software (e.g., an ecommerce website, a customer portal, a mobile banking app, an accounting system). |
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You want to monetize your payment gateway by allowing other companies to use it for a fee. For example, if you own an ecommerce marketplace, you can offer the merchants to accept payments via your custom-made payment gateway and charge them for this service. |
It's high time to build your own payment gateway
Driven by the increasing volume of ecommerce transactions, the global payment gateway market is projected to grow from $26.1 billion in 2022 to $161 billion by 2032. With the ever-growing demand for convenient and safe digital payments, every company still has a chance to come up with an innovative payment gateway solution and become one of the biggest players on the market.
Companies that Benefit from Developing a Payment Gateway
Ecommerce merchants
Digital marketplace owners
Acquiring banks
Non-bank payment service providers
Managed billing service providers
Fintech startups
DeFi companies
Software product companies
How To Develop A Payment Gateway: Key Steps
Below, ScienceSoft’s experts describe the core steps we perform to create a payment gateway from scratch and share best practices to maximize ROI from the project.
Step 1
Conduct a feasibility study
Duration: 1–3 weeks.
ScienceSoft’s consultants thoroughly analyze our clients’ unique payment handling needs and existing IT infrastructure to help assess the economic feasibility of custom payment gateway development for each particular business. Based on the analysis results, we introduce a list of tangible benefits that a custom payment gateway can bring to the company, as well as a high-level estimation of development costs and a ROI calculation.
Step 2
Design payment gateway software and plan the project
Duration: 4–7 weeks.
ScienceSoft’s team provides a detailed list of requirements for the payment gateway, which describes:
- All the functional capabilities a payment gateway should provide.
- The types of data the solution should be able to process (e.g., customers’ personal information, credit card data, e-wallet credentials).
- Non-functional requirements for the payment gateway (e.g., performance, scalability, availability, integrity).
- Security and compliance requirements to be met (e.g., PCI DSS for secure credit card payments processing, AML and KYC requirements to prevent payment fraud).
- Requirements for the visual style, structure, and contents of a checkout page.
A well-designed requirements specification provides a basis to create:
- Architecture design for a payment gateway and its interactions with the required systems.
- A feature set for a custom payment gateway, including security features.
- UX and UI design of a checkout page.
- Integration API design to enhance the payment gateway’s integration capabilities.
- A development project plan, including project objectives and KPIs, deliverables, schedule, and a risk mitigation plan.
Step 3
Select the optimal technology stack
Duration: 2–3 weeks.
ScienceSoft defines the techs and tools required to build an online payment gateway and integrate it with relevant corporate solutions and external systems. We compare the available techs and tools in the context of documented business requirements and create an optimal tech stack with attention to the client's priorities (e.g., fast development, minimized project cost).
Best practice: We use frameworks and ready-made components where possible to streamline payment gateway development, ensure high quality of the solution, and optimize the project cost.
Step 4
Build a payment gateway
Duration: 4–7 months, depending on the solution’s complexity.
The development of a payment gateway with ScienceSoft usually includes the following stages:
- Establishing development and delivery automation environments (CI/CD pipelines, container orchestration, etc.).
- Developing the back end of a custom payment gateway, including integration APIs.
- Developing a customer-facing checkout page and admin interface to monitor the payment gateway performance.
- Implementing a secure database to store the sensitive data provided by customers.
- Running quality assurance procedures in parallel with development to validate payment gateway’s quality and fix the defects before the gateway is deployed.
Best practice: In payment gateway creation projects, ScienceSoft employs an iterative approach to software development to introduce the fundamental functions first and enable faster payback from the payment gateway implementation.
We can deliver an MVP of a custom payment gateway in 3–5 months and consistently grow it to the full-featured solution with major releases every 2–3 weeks.
Step 5
Deploy the solution in production
Duration: 1–2 weeks.
Once the payment gateway has passed functional and non-functional (incl. security) testing, ScienceSoft’s team configures the solution’s infrastructure, backup and recovery procedures, and proceeds with automated deployment of the payment gateway.
Best practice: To ensure that a payment gateway’s infrastructure is well-protected, ScienceSoft recommends implementing authorization controls for APIs, DDoS protection algorithms, firewalls, IDSs / IPSs, DLP systems, and other security tools.
Step 6
Integrate the gateway with other systems
Duration: 1–8 weeks, depending on the integration complexity.
ScienceSoft’s team implements and tests the gateway integrations with required systems (an app that hosts a checkout page, payment processing systems, accounting software, etc.) to ensure the seamless and secure data flow between the parties involved in payment initiation and settlement processes.
Step 7
Support and evolve the payment gateway (optional)
Duration: continuous.
ScienceSoft’s team:
- Monitors the payment gateway performance and fixes possible issues (e.g., insufficient payment processing speed, payment data processing errors).
- Scales the solution to handle the growing amount of payment transactions.
- Upgrades the payment gateway functionality when required (adds new payment currencies, payment methods, UI elements, etc.).
- Performs regular audits of payment gateway compliance with PCI DSS and other relevant data security standards and regulations.
Professional Payment Gateway Development Services
Having 34 years of experience in software development and 18-year expertise in paytech, ScienceSoft can provide:
Consulting on payment gateway implementation
- Designing a secure and scalable payment gateway architecture.
- Composing an optimal feature set and tech stack for a payment gateway.
- Preparing a plan of integrations with the required systems.
- Consulting on security and compliance.
- Delivering a roadmap for payment gateway implementation, including cost and time estimates and a risk mitigation plan.
End-to-end payment gateway development
- Conceptualizing a payment gateway.
- Payment gateway development.
- Integrating the payment gateway with the required systems.
- Implementing security policies, procedures, and controls for cardholder data to achieve PCI DSS compliance.
- Quality assurance.
- Support and evolution (if required).
Why Choose Payment Gateway Development with ScienceSoft
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Typical Roles on ScienceSoft’s Payment Gateway Development Teams
Project Manager
Plans the payment gateway project (goals, timeline, budget), prioritizes the scope of work and monitors its execution, coordinates the project team, reports the progress to the stakeholders.
Business Analyst
Elicits and documents functional and non-functional requirements for the payment gateway, analyzes technical capabilities and limitations of the existing IT infrastructure.
Solution Architect
Designs the architecture of the payment gateway solution, including integration points with the required systems.
UX/UI Designer
Designs the UX and UI of a customer-facing checkout page and the back-office UI to monitor the payment gateway’s performance.
DevOps Engineer
Containerizes the components of the payment gateway solution and configures CI/CD pipelines for streamlined testing and facilitated deployment.
Back-end Developer
Delivers the back end of the payment gateway (including integration API code) and fixes defects reported by QA engineers.
Front-end Developer
Delivers the UI of a customer-facing checkout page and an admin panel and fixes defects reported by QA engineers.
QA Engineer
Designs and implements a test strategy, a test plan, and test cases to perform functional (incl. integration) and non-functional testing (e.g., security, performance, and usability testing).
Sourcing Models for Payment Gateway Development
Payment Gateway Development: A Featured Success Story by ScienceSoft
Payment Gateway Development for a Messaging App with 900M+ Users
ScienceSoft built a custom payment gateway to introduce seamless payment experience for 900M+ active users of Viber, a messaging app that operates in more than 190 countries. Particularly, our team:
- Created a checkout page fully compatible with Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Android and iOS browsers.
- Integrated the payment gateway with PayPal and a card network (Visa, MasterCard, American Express) to support popular payment methods.
- Designed a payment module architecture for fast and easy integration of new payment methods.
- Implemented a range of security tools to protect the system against XSS and CSRF attacks.
ScienceSoft’s Tech Stack for Payment Gateway Development
ScienceSoft’s developers usually rely on the following reliable tools and technologies to build and implement a payment gateway:
Cost of Payment Gateway Development
Based on ScienceSoft's experience in payment software development projects, we defined the general cost factors that apply to the majority of payment gateway development use cases:
- Requirements for the functional capabilities, performance, scalability, availability, and security of a payment gateway.
- The number and complexity of integrations with relevant software (customer-facing web and mobile apps, payment processing systems, accounting software, data analytics solutions, etc.).
- The required modifications of the integrated web and mobile apps, both on the technical level and on the app logic level.
- Whether the payment gateway is going to be monetized or not: the former calls for the ready-to-use integration API development.
- Requirements for the appearance, structure, and contents of a checkout page.
- The need to obtain and maintain PCI DSS certification.
From ScienceSoft’s experience, end-to-end payment gateway development cost varies between $100,000 to $300,000+, depending on the project complexity and the software specifics.
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FAQs about Payment Gateways, Answered
How long does it take to develop a payment gateway?
Payment gateway development with ScienceSoft may take 6–11+ months, depending on the project’s complexity. We can deliver an MVP of your custom payment gateway within 3–5 months and set the lean solution live to enable faster payback.
How to reduce the cost of payment gateway development?
Some of ScienceSoft’s practices to optimize payment gateway development costs are:
- Designing an optimal feature set for the gateway to avoid investments in irrelevant and redundant functionality.
- Relying on flexible modular architectures (SOA, microservices) to build different payment gateway components in parallel and reduce development timelines.
- Using ready-made building blocks for the gateway logic, secure third-party APIs, reusable deployment scripts, etc. to reduce the share of expensive custom coding.
- Composing the optimal development team and on-demand team up- and downscaling to prevent payments for excessive resources.
How to start the project with minimal risks?
Here at ScienceSoft, we thoroughly analyze the economic feasibility of custom payment gateway development for each client. Also, we can deliver a proof of concept to quickly assess the viability of an innovative solution (e.g., a crypto payment gateway) and test its compatibility with the required payment processing systems.
About ScienceSoft
ScienceSoft is a global software development company headquartered in McKinney, Texas. We help companies create reliable and secure payment gateway solutions tailored to their specific payment handling needs. In our payment gateway development projects, we employ robust quality management and data security management systems backed by ISO 9001 and ISO 27001 certification.