How are credit card transactions handled?

Steps involved in a normal credit card transaction:

First a sale is generated with the merchant from an online payment form.  In a brick and mortar establishment this would be the equivalent of the POS terminal. 


Information gathered at the point of sale is first ran through a series of filters in Epoch's processing engine to help eliminate fraud or submissions with incomplete or inaccurate data.

The credit card data and sales amount of the sale are sent to their acquiring bank.

The acquiring bank then directs the authorization to the card-issuing bank.

If the cardholder has enough credit in their account to cover the sale, the issuing bank authorizes the transaction and generates an authorization code.

The acquiring bank processes the transaction, and then sends the approval or denial code back to Epoch's processing server.

An email receipt is generated and sent to the purchaser's email address.

At some point afterward the acquiring bank performs an interchange for each transaction.

The acquiring bank then deposits the amount of the all the transactions submitted by the merchant, less a discount fee, into the merchant's bank account.


Epoch has been providing award winning online payment solutions since 1996. As an experienced ecommerce pioneer, we continue to lead the way in innovation and flexibility. Expand your marketplace with Epoch.