Payment Gateway Architecture
Learner explains payment gateway architecture, including checkout, token vault, routing, retries, and settlement, and designs a gateway flow for an online merchant. Learner practises this skill on realistic banking cases, explaining the reasoning clearly and using correct terminology throughout the work.
Payment gateway architecture: how gateways move money from checkout to bank settlement, and how a gateway differs from a processor.
What You Can Do After This Chapter
Learning objective. Learner explains payment gateway architecture, including checkout, token vault, routing, retries, and settlement, and designs a gateway flow for an online merchant. Learner practises this skill on realistic banking cases, explaining the reasoning clearly and using correct terminology throughout the work.
Practical assessment. Learner designs a gateway flow for a merchant taking 5,000 orders per day with an average value of 80 dollars, covering checkout, authorization, token storage, routing to two acquirers, and settlement. Learner then handles three failures, a declined card, a timeout, and a duplicate webhook, stating the gateway response, the customer message, and the retry rule for each. Learner presents the work with calculations and assumptions stated clearly, then reviews it against the chapter checklist and corrects any gaps before submission.
Expected deliverables.
- Gateway architecture diagram
- Checkout to settlement flow
- Failure handling table for three failures
- Routing and retry rules document
Completion criterion. Learner covers checkout, token vault, routing, and settlement, handles all three failures with the right response, and states the retry rule correctly. Judgement covers accuracy, completeness, and clear written explanation in the submitted work.