Digital commerce payments are electronic payments, often made with real-time authorization, that are used to support digital commerce transactions. Digital commerce payment vendors combine a payment gateway, payment processing, acquiring services, payment security and fraud detection. Payment gateways initiate payments at the request of merchants and return the responses to those merchants. They offer preexisting connections and certified integrations with key payment acquirers and processors, and many have integrations with other providers in the greater digital commerce ecosystem. All digital commerce payment vendors offer a software as a service (SaaS) payment gateway at a minimum. Many are full-stack providers that include processing and acquiring capabilities, alternative payment methods, fraud detection, payment data tokenization, and other related or ancillary services.
A “subscription” is a contract between a supplier and a customer for the supply of a product or service over an extended period of time. The price of the subscription may be fixed (for example, access to a digital newspaper for $199 per year), variable depending on the level of usage (for example, mobile phone usage or flight hours on an aircraft engine) or a mix of fixed and usage-based charges. One or more subscriptions are recorded on a “service contract.” “Recurring billing” is the periodic (for example, monthly or annual) invoicing of a customer to collect payment for one or more subscriptions. “Subscription management” is the process of selling new subscriptions and amending existing subscriptions over time.