Payment Technology & Operations
Understand the technology that moves money through your business—from checkout and authorization to settlement, reconciliation, and merchant funding.
Practical guides for business owners covering gateways, processors, merchant accounts, APIs, recurring billing, POS systems, digital wallets, payment routing, and emerging technology.
Built for business owners Jargon-free explanations Reviewed by payment professionals
Important: An approved payment has not yet reached the merchant’s bank account.
Start With What You Need to Solve
You do not need to know the technical term. Search a question or choose the part of your payment operation you want to understand.
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Understand the Payment Stack
Learn how gateways, processors, merchant accounts, card networks, and banks work together.
Explore the payment stack →Build a Better Checkout
Understand hosted checkout, embedded payments, APIs, webhooks, tokenization, and integrations.
Start with checkout →Improve Payment Operations
Learn how capture, batching, settlement, funding, reconciliation, and recurring billing operate.
See funding and settlement →Expand How Customers Pay
Explore POS systems, ACH, digital wallets, virtual terminals, omnichannel commerce, and emerging payments.
Explore payment acceptance →See How a Payment Moves Through Your Business
Select a stage to understand what it does, why it matters, and how it can affect approvals, customer experience, reporting, and cash flow.
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How Does Your Payment Stack Fit Together?
Align Ecommerce can review your gateway, processor, merchant account, checkout, settlement, and reporting structure.