Payment methods and gateways

A payment method is how money reaches you: a card processor, a bank transfer, cash at a counter. A gateway is what a channel calls it in the data it sends.

They are separate because the channel's naming is the channel's business. One store's gateway name and another's may mean the same thing to you, and neither has to match what you call it.

Gateways arrive rather than being configured

You do not have to predict the names a channel will use. The first time Yessort sees an unfamiliar gateway on a payment, it records it as seen but unmapped and shows it to you.

This is deliberate. Requiring every gateway to be configured before going live would mean discovering the ones you forgot through failed payments, which is a bad way to find out.

Mapping catches up

Mapping a gateway also applies to the payments that were waiting on it. Payments that arrived while it was unmapped are picked up — nothing needs reworking by hand.

Same principle as hold, don't drop: the work is kept, and completing the configuration releases it.

Per channel

Mappings belong to a channel. Two stores both reporting the same gateway name can map to different payment methods, which they should if the money settles into different accounts.

The channel side of this is covered in map a payment gateway.

The fallback

A channel can nominate a default payment method for payments whose gateway matches nothing mapped. It keeps things moving while a new gateway waits to be dealt with.

Without one, a payment on an unrecognised gateway waits until you map it.

What the mapping decides

Which payment method a payment is recorded against — which in turn feeds how it is posted and how it is reconciled against what actually reaches the bank.

That last part is gateway payouts: a processor reports what it took, then pays out in a lump some days later, and those two need tying together.