EcomMerchant is a Payment Gateway for businesses that wish to take credit / debit card payments via their website (ecommerce) and/or via the Telephone/Mail Order (Virtual Terminal). A number of solutions exist to allow you to facilitate payments with our service that will suit your requirements. Over 50 shopping carts can be integrated including; WooCommerce, OpenCart, VirtueMart, ECWID and FreeWebstore ( the full list of options can be found here ). A number of card terminal / Point of Sale card processing options are also available.
We are also able to offer a number of payment mechanisms that will facilitate accepting payments for your organisation. These are included at no extra charge to your account and include Pay-Link, Subscription, Pre-Authorisation payments to name a few. See our Add On Services Page for a description of how these operate.
| Per Transaction | Add on Services | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Ecommerce or Mail / Telephone Order Payments or both as there is no additional charge to add one to the other. | Service | Payment | |
| Up to 500 Monthly Transactions | £25.00 (per month) | Multi Merchant Interface | £5.00 Monthly |
| Above 500 Monthly Transactions | £0.10 (per trans) | Tokenization Payments | £20.00 Monthly |
Our Modules
Third Party Modules
Real-Time Account Updater
Total Web Solutions provides automatic updates for expiring or replaced cards, ensuring your recurring billing runs smoothly without interruption. Merchants receive refreshed cardholder details instantly—reducing failed payments and improving customer retention.
Pay Button
Total Web Solutions provides a Pay Button feature that allows merchants to create a secure, pre-configured payment link that can be embedded directly into any HTML page. When a customer clicks the link, they are taken to a hosted payment form that is automatically populated with the details you specified in the Merchant Management System. A QR code version can also be generated for quick, scan-to-pay checkout.
All Major Card Types Accepted
Our payment gateway supports all major global card schemes, making it easier for merchants to accept payments from international customers. More choice for cardholders means higher conversion rates for your business.
Security Checks & 3-D Secure
Total Web Solutions performs CVV, AVS and additional authentication checks to verify that the cardholder has the right to use the card. 3-D Secure (Verified by Visa / Mastercard SecureCode) adds an extra layer of protection and helps reduce fraudulent transactions.
How 3-D Secure Works
3-D Secure enables cardholders to authenticate payments using a password or additional verification step known only to them. This strengthens security by verifying the customer, reducing chargebacks, and supporting merchant liability protection depending on your acquiring bank.
Fraud Prevention
Fraud remains one of the biggest threats to online transactions. Total Web Solutions offers advanced fraud prevention tools—blocking suspicious activity, monitoring patterns, and supporting integrations with third-party anti-fraud systems to keep your business protected.
DDoS Mitigation
Our gateway benefits from enterprise-level DDoS protection designed to keep your payment flow live, even during high-volume distributed attacks. Your transactions remain secure and uninterrupted around the clock.
Velocity Checking
We analyse transaction behaviour in real time to detect unusual spikes in activity. Merchants can set their own frequency and usage limits, with soft alerts or hard blocks triggered automatically if configured thresholds are exceeded.
Recurring Payments with Tokenisation
Successful transactions generate a secure token that can be reused for subscription billing, repeat purchases, or refunds—without storing sensitive card data. Tokens provide complete flexibility for recurring revenue models at no additional cost.
To receive money into your bank account from credit and debit card payments you will require a Merchant Account. A Merchant Account is separate from your normal business bank account and does not have to be with the same bank. An Merchant account (MA) is an account required to receive payments online using a Payment Gateway / Virtual Terminal / PayLink etc.
Total Web Solutions has relationships with all the major UK acquiring banks who offer merchant services, and due to our buying power as a long-standing and trusted Payment Service Provider, we can obtain preferential Merchant Account rates for your business.
our buying power as a long-standing and trusted Payment Service Provider, we can obtain preferential Merchant Account rates for your business. Whether you are new to online card payment processing or looking to switch from your existing provider we can assist you. Total Web Solutions can also obtain preferential rates and terms on card terminals (Countertop/Wireless/Mobile etc). Please click here to receive a quote. Quotes are completely free and there is no obligation to purchase.
Paylink Payments
For merchants who handle pro-forma orders or wish to give the power to their customer as to when they process the payment for their order, then PayLink Payments is for you. This service, once enabled can generate Pay-Links via your EcomMerchant control panel or can be generated on the fly via an API, both sending an email to your customer containing a web link that will forward them to make a payment against your previously generated order. Pay-Links, once generated can be modified and re-sent to your customer or deleted if required.
Multi-Lingual Payment Page
The Pay Page mechanism is very flexible and allows you, the merchant, to decide which language to display the pay page in. We support several languages and new ones can be added should a customer have a specific requirement.
Once this service is enabled the merchant just passes in the language to the pay page as a parameter and the pay page is then displayed in that language. We currently support: English; French; German; Spanish.
Mobile Phone Payments
Purchases that are made using a mobile phone, smart phone or tablet have been increasing exponentially year on year. To take advantage of this growth, we have now integrated the Pay Page mechanism to allow payments to be taken via these devices. The Pay Page will fit neatly into the designated screen size and allow payments to be processed just like it would be over the web. There are also some customisable features to give your pay page a branded look and feel to your mobile customers.
Pre-Authorisation Payments
The Pre-Authorisation payments module enables you to reserve a payment against a customer card until such time you have the final payment amount and you are ready to authorise the card. This is useful in the travel industry and in particular hotels where a customer might have additional costs such as room service and you want to ensure there are sufficient funds to cover them.
Batch Payments
The Batch Payments service offers Merchants the ability to process payments in a batch as opposed to doing them one at a time. Card data would be collected in a CSV format by you, the merchant and pasted into your EcomMerchant administration tool. This will in turn process all sales and refund transactions and provide feedback as to which cards were successful and which were not. This mechanism requires additional assessment in regards to PCI accreditation as you would be handling the full card data.
Deferred Payments
The Deferred Payments service offers Merchants the ability to have more control over orders by deciding when to release transactions. Some businesses need to allow for items that are out of stock or to modify orders and payments for discontinued products. Whatever the merchants reasons this service enables the merchant to have more control over when their customers’ credit or debit card is processed. Another unique feature of this service is the ability to authorize a small amount transaction and reverse it to ensure the card details are valid.
Tokenization Payments
For merchants who historically have handled card data and wish to relieve themselves of the burden of PCI may wish to implement this service. Tokenization allows the merchant to authorize cards without the need to store or transmit card data. Instead the merchant manages tokens supplied by the EcomMerchant service which can be used once to process a transaction whereby a new token is issued which the merchant must store for a subsequent transaction. This abstraction means merchants can essentially absolve themselves of the burden of having to secure card data and any associated PCI compliance.
Subscription Payments
For merchants who handle large volumes of subscriptions e.g. Magazine subscriptions or take regular payment amounts from their customers, then this service will meet your requirements. This module, once enabled, will allow merchants to add customers card details to their EcomMerchant account where you can decide the amount and regularity of payment against your customers card. [read more]Each subscription can be individually modified to allow differing amounts and the date you wish your payment to be taken. There is also a built in feature to check your customers card is still valid in the form of an Account Verification. This mechanism uses the industry Credential On File method of allowing a card to be re-used without re-entry into the system, as long as the merchant has obtained permission from the cardholder.
Extended Data Elements
With our payment mechanisms we provide merchants with the ability to pass through a limited amount of information to record along side each transaction. This is sometimes not sufficient for some merchants who require additional information to be stored with each transaction such as product purchased, store purchased from, etc etc.
We therefore provide an additional service that allow this to happen in the form of five additional fields of 25 characters in length that can be passed to us for storage alongside your transactions. This would be unique data for each transaction or you can provide default information if you require. This data is also passed to the bank and may appear on the purchasers credit card or bank statement.
Repeat Payments
The repeat payment service is a useful service which enables merchants to take a further payment from a purchasers credit or debit card without having the original credit card details. This feature available through the merchants control panel will enable a further payment to be taken at an amount specified by the merchant. This mechanism uses the industry Credential On File method of allowing a card to be re-used without re-entry into the system, as long as the merchant has obtained permission from the cardholder.
This service is useful for organisations that may have to charge additional amounts for overuse such as couriers who may charge for extra weight when their customer has told them it was for a lower weight. Most companies at some time or another will need to re-charge a customer and this is a very useful facility for just such occasions.
Please note, Repeat Payments are put through without the CV2 code (security code on the back of the card) as per PCI rules. Due to this, the acquiring bank providing your Internet Merchant Account may charge a small % on top of any Repeat Payments as a non-secure charge.
Multi-currency
For those businesses wishing to take payments in different currencies then we have a facility to enable multi-currency payments. This service will require a new merchant number for each currency you wish to take payments in. Should you wish to take payments in a particular currency but have the payments settled in another then this is also possible.
For instance you may already have a merchant account which allows you to take payments in Sterling and which subsequently gets paid (settled) into your sterling bank account. You then decide you want to take payments in US dollars however you do not have a US Dollar bank account. This should not be a problem because a merchant account can be setup that accepts payments in US Dollars but pays into a sterling bank account. Applying for a separate currency merchant account is usually a formality when you have an existing Sterling merchant account.
Multi-Merchant Management Interface
The Multi-Merchant Management interface provides merchants with the ability to manage additional merchant accounts for organisations that have either many outlets or divisions. Some organisations may have multiple branches that require separate merchant accounts and separate user accounts to manage them.
This service allows a nominated manager to use their EcomMerchant account to setup new users and allocate levels of access to those users. Each user will then be able to login to the EcomMerchant control panel and only see services that the nominated manager has specified when they setup the users account. This service can be used to manage multiple merchant accounts or multiple user accounts or both. It is very flexible and easy to use.
Merchants who will be taking card payments through their website are likely to want to integrate the EcomMerchant Payment Gateway service using a shopping cart. A shopping cart provides purchasers with the ability to purchase more than one product or service and provides an easy flow from selecting products for purchase to completion of payment.
For those merchants who use a shopping cart solution on their website we offer a variety of payment plug-ins or payment modules to facilitate this. The list of shopping carts and integration platforms we support is growing and we are happy to work with any platform providers to integrate our payment mechanism to their solution (See Developer/Integrator section). Below is a list of some of the Shopping Carts and Integration Platforms we support in alphabetical order. Shopping cart plugins and modules can be downloaded by clicking on the logo (for most) or by contacting the Technical Support team. If your chosen shopping cart is not shown here please contact our Sales team as we may still be able to offer integration.
Bespoke integration can be achieved using our interface specification document and test account. Contact the Sales team if you wish to discuss a bespoke/one-off integration.
We will work with developers to ensure a seamless integration to our Payment Gateway as well as offering bespoke solutions to those who require specialist data from our systems. Typically we engage with Shopping Basket Developers, Web Developers, MIS developers and Account Package Developers and have a number of API’s and Supporting documentation to facilitate those developers with disparate requirements. All our interfaces are developed to the highest specifications and are securely developed in line with OWASP standards.
We are happy to discuss possible integration avenues with developers who believe that there could be mutually beneficial projects that require development. These can range from specific interface requirements (such as SOAP) to Automated Telephone System payment requirements. Please contact us should you wish to discuss specific products.
A Payment Gateway is a mechanism used for collecting, authorising and storing card data on behalf of merchants. Typically it is connected to a website via an Ecommerce shopping cart or payment module (e.g. WooCommerce, OpenCart, Shopify, Freewebstore). The purchaser enters their credit or debit card details encrypted into a secure PayPage on the Payment Service Provider’s servers who in turn sends the data through to the card clearing bank for authorisation. Total Web Solutions’ EcomMerchant Payment Gateway is one of the lowest priced secure online payment processing systems in the UK.
A Merchant Account is a service provided by an acquiring bank (e.g. Barclaycard, First Data, WorldPay) to enable business to accept card payments. Transactions are processed using a merchant ID for authorisation but no money is held in a Merchant Account, instead the money is settled via the acquiring bank into the merchant’s chosen bank account (normally a business bank account). A standard Merchant Account would be used for a physical card terminal (chip&pin) so for online payment processing (via a Payment Gateway) an Internet Merchant Account is required. Total Web Solutions is able to obtain favourable rates and terms for Merchant Accounts / Internet Merchant Accounts / Card Terminals via a number of leading acquiring banks due to our buying power.
A Virtual Terminal is a mechanism for processing credit and debit card transactions, as provided to the merchant by the purchaser, via MOTO (Mail Order / Telephone Order). The merchant would enter card details and associated billing details into a secure online control panel for instant authorisation via the clearing bank. Any mail order forms containing card data would need to be stored secured in line with PCI Compliance requirement.
In order to use the Total Web Solutions Payment Gateway you will need to have or be able to obtain a Merchant Account. If you do not already have one we will be able to forward your application to one of the acquiring banks we work with so that they can contact you to provide a quote. Please complete our online application form by click the "Apply Now" link which is located in the menu bar.
It will be necessary for you to have a bank account for us to pay your transaction payments into. Without an account the funds would not be able to be credited to you. In most cases this will need to be a UK Business bank account.
Yes, this is possible for currency transactions. You may have a Pound Sterling Bank account yet your customer base wants to pay in Japanese Yen. This is possible by setting up a Sterling to Yen Merchant number with the Bank. Total Web Solutions supports some many currencies with the option for more through agreed testing with the banks. We will always investigate currency requests by our customers.
Your account will be for retail or a customer present merchant account. There are different types of merchant account depending on how you take your payments. In this case you require an Internet Merchant Account (for Internet transactions) or a MOTO Account (for Mail Order/Telephone Order transactions) which will allow you to process cards through a registered and PCI compliant Payment Gateway like Total Web Solutions.
This depends on which bank you have decided to set-up a merchant account with. Typically this should take two to four weeks however this could take longer depending on how quickly you can provide any necessary documentation so please take this into consideration in your project time scales. Typically, the quicker you respond to the banks quotation the quicker the account can be activated.
Once Total Web Solutions is in receipt of your merchant number (if you receive your merchant number direct from the bank it is wise to forward this to Total Web Solutions as soon as possible) they can setup your EcomMerchant account. A test EcomMerchant account will be setup to enable you to test your account prior to enabling your account on the live system. A test script is provided to each customer and once Total Web Solutions is satisfied that you are processing credit cards correctly it will switch you over to the live system. Documentation is provided to facilitate the testing and integration of the service with your web site. For MOTO accounts no testing is necessary as all transactions are carried out through a virtual terminal in your provided EcomMerchant control panel.
The EcomMerchant account comes with an extensive control panel that allows you to produce End Of Day Reports for all transactions and should allow you to perform other functions also including card refunds. Many features are available through the control panel including Anti-fraud, statistics, Pay Page look and Feel, account security and many many more.
This largely depends on the terms agreed with your acquiring bank for the Merchant Account. Typically it takes one to three working days. In the unlikely event of any problem, missed transactions get batched in the following day so you will always get your funds deposited to your account. All transactions are reconciled daily for each EcomMerchant account.
We have various mechanisms in place to protect us from such an event. We have an identical backup system in place that can be activated within seconds of a major server failure. Our Card Processing System comprises of multiple servers and network devices and we have at least two of everything running at all times to ensure reliable and available service. Often the customer who is making the purchase will not be aware there has been a problem.
We take security very seriously. So much so that we are now externally audited by VISA and MASTERCARD to ensure our security meets their requirements plus some of Total Web Solutions own. We currently have redundantly deployed firewall and intrusion detection systems in place along with the secure storage of credit card data by storing in an encrypted format. Total Web Solutions is a PCI Level 1 Certified payment service provider and was one of the first accredited Companies in the world for this standard. We have worked with a number of security consultants to ensure our systems are as secure as possible and endeavour to introduce new features where practical to maintain the high levels of security our customers expect.
The EcomMerchant account supports VISA, VISA DEBIT, MASTERCARD, MASTERCARD DEBIT, JCB, MAESTRO by default. We can also support both American Express and Diners Club but these have to be applied for separately either via the acquiring bank or directly. Adding further card types is subject to acceptance and testing with the acquiring bank.
At Total Web Solutions we specialise in providing services that work and work well for our customers. Part of the service we provide to our customers using the EcomMerchant facility is the provision of an Anti-fraud feature in your control panel. This Anti-fraud allows you to perform up to 15 unique checks against possible fraud with some of those checks configurable by the customer. Features such as which countries to accept card transactions from, what level of security you would like purchasers to experience when making a payment to you. These features are all explained within the control panel to facilitate its use. This feature is also provided free of charge to EcomMerchant customers.
Firstly, when you use Total Web Solutions we aim to provide a cost effective payment processing solution to you the merchant. With this in mind we charge No Setup Fee and provide 500 transactions free of charge for a low monthly fee. Total Web Solutions are confident that we provide one of the most cost effective payment services in the UK with no compromise on service or security. With EcomMerchant accounts each transaction above the initial threshold is chargeable and Total Web Solutions will bill for these transactions monthly in arrears. As well as this transaction charge the aquiring bank will also charge you for processing cards and their transaction charges will be quoted directly at the Merchant Account application stage. The majority of our customers are charged less than 2% for Credit Cards and less than 1% for Debit Cards (subject to approval - Business card rates may be higher). Please take both the Total Web Solutions charges and the bank charges into consideration when determining your products/services prices on your web site as these cannot be passed on separately to the end customer by law.
There are no setup charges from Total Web Solutions but we do require the first 12 months of service in advance as detailed in our terms. The acquiring banks do typically charge a setup fee if you approach them directly. However, when you apply via ourselves we will generally be able to get this waivered for you due to our partnerships and buying power. Full rates and terms would be quoted directly by the acquiring bank once you have started an application with us
Please see the link to Services and Price to understand all charges. For low volume customers an EcomMerchant account can cost as little as £25+VAT per month which I am sure you will agree is very reasonable indeed, especially when you get so many services included in the price.
We have agreements in place with several UK banks to provide payment services to our customers. These services are based on the bank providing us with favourable rates so that we can pass those onto our customers. Customers would not be able to realise those rates if they had gone directly to the bank.
PCI stands for Payment Card Industry and is a standard born out of the card schemes (such as Visa) requirement to make payment services more secure. Total Web Solutions is a level 1 PCI accredited company which is the highest level accreditation. We have become accredited so you do not have to and by using our Pay Page mechanism card details are seamlessly taken on our secure system which has been rigorously tested to the highest standards in security. There are scenarios where accreditation is required for a customer but this is usually at a much lower level (Level 4) whereby basic security principles must be upheld. Your bank will usually contact you about this to ensure your compliance in this regards.
Total Web Solutions are remunerated by Acquiring banks such as BarclayCard for successful introductions that result in the Acquirer providing merchant acquiring or gateway solutions to a merchant.