Payments questions, answered.

The gateway is the secure technology that takes the card details from your checkout and sends the payment for approval. The processor and its bank approve your merchant account, authorise the payment and deposit the money into your bank account. Inicio provides the gateway. Your processor provides the merchant account.

Yes. To accept cards through a gateway you need a merchant account with a processor. If you don't have one, we match you with a processor and help you apply.

Usually, yes. We connect to more than 150 processors. Check the supported processors page or ask us to confirm yours.

Sometimes, but card network and state rules apply. Surcharges are allowed only on credit cards, never on debit or prepaid cards, and must be shown clearly before payment. You must give at least 30 days' notice to your processor and, for Mastercard, to Mastercard. Mastercard caps surcharges at 4% and Visa at 3%, and both cap them at your actual cost of acceptance if that is lower. Some states set lower limits or restrict surcharging. Read Visa's surcharging guidance and Mastercard's surcharge rules, and check your state's law before you start.

The Inicio gateway has a one-time $75 setup fee and a $300 fee if you cancel your gateway account. Your processor's merchant agreement is separate and may have its own term and fees, so we point out every term and fee before you sign.

Pre-qualification takes about five minutes, and we reply by email. Processor approval depends on the processor and how complete your documents are. Once you're approved, we set up and connect the gateway and help you test your checkout before you go live.

Your processor notifies you and gives you a deadline to respond with evidence such as order details, delivery tracking and customer messages. We help you set up fraud tools and clear policies that prevent disputes, and add 3-D Secure, which usually moves fraud liability on verified payments to the card issuer.

VAMP is Visa's Acquirer Monitoring Program. Visa tracks each merchant's ratio of reported fraud and disputes against its card-not-present sales. Merchants above Visa's limits can face extra fees, closer monitoring or loss of their account. Blocking fraud before payment, with fraud screening and 3-D Secure, keeps the ratio down. Read Visa's introduction to VAMP.

Card data is captured by secure fields and stored as tokens, so full card numbers never touch your server. That shrinks your PCI scope, but you still need to complete the yearly PCI self-assessment your processor asks for. The standards are published by the PCI Security Standards Council.

If you have a backup merchant account connected, payments can be sent through it with no change to your checkout. Saved cards stay in the gateway vault, so subscriptions keep running.