Payment Actors and Flow
The overall integration setup of the American Express Payment Gateway that you use for managing payments, contains the following four actors:
- Payer
- You as the Merchant
- American Express
- Acquirer
Your payment service provider creates a merchant profile for you to accept payments using the American Express Payment Gateway. Your profile is configured to process payments using acquirers such as your bank or other payment providers like PayPal.
A single customer, also known as payer, order results in the following flow:
- The payer places an order on your website or in your app.
- You can send an API operation request to the gateway.
- The gateway forwards the transaction to your acquirer.
- Your acquirer manages the process with the payment network to move funds from your payer's account, with their issuer, to yours.