In order to process payments, you’ll need a merchant account as well as a payment gateway. Here’s a quick rundown of the major distinctions between the two. A merchant account is a type of holding account that collects information about payment transactions.

There are some erroneous conceptions commonly about the difference between payment gateway and merchant account, the business only requires one or the other. Actually, they serve 2 specific different functions: while the payment gateway brings a desired condition for online transactions and allows merchants to process them, the merchant account is a holding account which those payments first being sent to before being deposited into the regular bank account.