A payment gateway is a software program integrated to a merchant's website to transmit transaction data to the Credit Card acquirer for authorization and settlement. Merchants gain the ability to perform real-time Credit Card authorizations from a web site over the Internet. Customers can pay for purchases across the Internet through Credit Cards within seconds, after the gateway obtains authorization from the Credit Card institutions.

CCAvenue provides complete, simple and secure online payment gateway services and e-business solutions to websites, with real time Credit Card transaction validation. This enables the websites to transact and accept payments online and in real time.

CCAvenue offers you (the Sub Merchant) two web integration interfaces to choose from Variable Amount Interface and Shopping Cart Interface. These interfaces can be seamlessly integrated with the look and feel of your website.

a) Variable Amount Interface: Use this interface if you have already developed your shopping cart and you need CCAvenue.com exclusively for final amount authorization. The customer finishes shopping on your site; and you just forward the final amount to the CCAvenue 'secure server final payment check out' page. Your customer then enters his/her Credit Card selection and shipping information to complete the sale. The full transaction flow from your site to the CCAvenue site to the payment gateway is explained in detail in the image below.

 

b) Shopping Cart Interface: If you have not yet developed a shopping cart for your website or you do not want to spend your precious resources on designing one, then this interface is just right for you. Use the readymade Shopping cart provided by CCAvenue with basic functionality; which can be customized to match the look and feel of your site. At the top of the shopping cart, simply put up your industry standard 468 x 68 banner, customize the background color and fonts to match that of your website, add the links and give it a total look and feel of continuity of your site. On your site, list your product or services and insert an 'Add To Cart' button next to this list. CCAvenue provides these buttons along with snippets of HTML code. Once your customer clicks on the 'Add to Cart' button, he is seamlessly taken to your customized Shopping Cart hosted on CCAvenue's secure server. Here he has the option of paying up and finishing the transaction OR adding more items from your site. Customers can select products for purchase and add them to a virtual "Shopping Cart" on CCAvenue secure server. When he has finished shopping, the customer clicks the 'Checkout' button, enters his/her Credit Card and shipping information to complete the sale. The full transaction flow from your site to the CCAvenue site to the payment gateway is explained in detail in the image below.

No. CCAvenue will set you up with Visa and American Express sub-merchant status.

Currently, we are accepting only Indian Entities.

No, International Merchants do not need to incorporate or set-up bank accounts in the United States or Singapore. We will wire your remittance or payment to your bank account in whichever country you wish.

Yes. We do not offer Internet merchant status for the following:

No. There are NO minimums imposed by CCAvenue.

No. CCAvenue takes down the barriers to your success! There are NO monthly maximums imposed on your merchant accounts.

Yes. We offer payment processing to electronic and physical delivery businesses as well as those selling services and tangible products.

No. You can sell your products or services to any Visa*, MasterCard*, American Express, Discover Network and JCB Cards issued anywhere in the world.

Make the currency decision based on your specific business requirements. Depending on where your target customers are located, you should choose the currency that meets your requirements. Based on our experience, while US customers prefer to shop in US Dollars, Indian client's prefer to shop in INR. Your global customers understand US Dollars best! If you wish to offer INR on your website, you may visit http://www.ccavenue.com/ccavenue_index.jsp and sign up there for an INR account.

No, because Currency Converters are dealing with today's conversion rate but all transactions are actually settled by our banks tomorrow! So in order to be accurate you would have to know the currency rate for tomorrow.

CCAvenue® offers a complete bouquet of major Credit Cards such as MasterCard, *Visa and American Express and now with the power of U.S. Dollar payment facility on your side, you can now free your website from the restraints of geographical reference points and labels like the First World or the Third World as the case may be. Whatever the size of your e-business, CCAvenue has a solution for you. The CCAvenue system is flexible enough to suit your requirements. To provide you and your customers a secure shopping environment, CCAvenue offers the highest level of SSL encryption. We also provide you with a wide range of customized commercial tools, which enable you to maximize the profitability of your website. Some of these are: SMS Alerts Facility, Auction Collection Feature, Invoice Payment Collection through email. Comprehensive Transactions Reporting and Accounting Merchant Interface with MIS features.

In addition to a complete bouquet of major Credit Cards such as *Visa and American Express , CCAvenue® offers you the following benefits regardless of the size of your e-business:

USD processing:
With the power of U.S. Dollar payment facility on your side, you can now free your website from the restraints of geographical reference points and labels like the First World or the Third World as the case may be.

Weekly Payouts:
We deliver your payout cheque every week. Compare this with a U.S. based payment gateway that takes at least 15 days to deliver your cheque. This means that you save at least 8 days worth of interest on your funds, every week.

SSL Security:
CCAvenue® has implemented state-of-the-art security processes that are currently not available with most US payment gateways. The latest Verified By Visa and MasterCard Secure Code security processes safeguards you from liability from charge backs caused due to `not authorized by customer' situations, which account for as much as 98% of the charge back incidents. Our hard earned reputation and superior business processes has resulted in tie-ups with globally respected banking giants and financial.

A wide variety of useful commercial tools:
We also provide you with a wide range of customized commercial tools, which enable you to maximize the profitability of your website. Some of these are: SMS Alerts Facility, Auction Collection Feature, Invoice Payment Collection through email. Comprehensive Transactions Reporting and Accounting Merchant Interface with MIS features.

Your customer can pay by any of the major Credit Cards such as MasterCard, *Visa and American Express issued anywhere in the world.

After you sign up online, our internal business and security team scrutinize your application. This will take a week. On approval, you will receive an e-mail from CCAvenue containing the good news and a link to CCAvenue's payment page from where you can pay CCAvenue's set-up fees by Credit Card. The approval email will also contain a list of documents required by us to validate your business. You will also have to download the CCAvenue Client Agreement , print it and get it signed by Authorized personnel of your firm/company and courier/hand deliver it to Avenues India Pvt. Ltd., Plaza Asiad, Level II, S.V. Road, Santa Cruz (West) Mumbai-400 054, India. We expect that you would complete all of this procedure within seven days of receipt of formal approval from us. Your account with CCAvenue will only be activated on receipt of all of the above. E-mail notification for activation of the account will be sent to the registered e-mail address. CCAvenue follows a policy akin to a bank account. We pay-out all funds over the first INR 1000/- accumulated into your sub-merchant account. We expect you to maintain a minimum balance of INR 1000/- to keep your account going. On closure of the account with us this amount is refundable after 180 days of the last transaction, as this is the period for which a sub-merchant is liable for chargebacks for Internet related Credit Card transactions.

Unlike financial institutions that demand huge upfront fees and lien deposits CCAvenue's charges are affordable for all types of business.

CCAvenue offers a choice of two schemes form which you can choose:

CCAvenue can provide you with one Merchant Account for each currency. You will need to sign up separately for both accounts - on http://www.ccavenue.com/ccavenue_index.jsp for the INR processing and on http://world.ccavenue.com for USD processing. After activation and integration, your customers can choose which currency they want to buy in. CCAvenue will automatically generate INR or USD online receipts and bills your customer accordingly!

No. CCAvenue cannot run your merchant numbers on our system.

In order to change "Pay to" details, you have to mail the administrator of CCAvenue via the "Help Desk" interface available on the website. You will receive a mail from the administrator as soon as the new "Pay to" details are approved. You have to sign a new agreement for the new "pay to" detail, to take effect. In order to change the "Account type", a Merchant may change/upgrade only from economy to premium type (by paying the difference in setup fees) and not vice-versa. The new account settings will reflect as soon as the excess fee payment is cleared and will be applicable from the next weekly payment cycle. The Sub Merchant does not have to make any changes on his site for the new settings to take place.Kindly mark a mail to compliance@ccavenue.com to change the ‘Pay To’ details. To upgrade your Account Type mark a mail to accounts@ccavenue.com.

You may represent your product pricing in any number of currencies. At the end of the transaction when your client has to checkout to the CCAvenue payment option page, we require that the payment amount is in INR equivalent only. This is because we do not process the final payment in any other currency but INR as we are subject to such RBI rules and Regulations. You need not create a different set of shopping cart links.

Example:
Let us assume you are keen to sell a product at US$ 10/- to a prospective US customer and feel that it is an attractive price for your product. So you represent US$ 10 on your web page. When the customer completes his shopping and the data of your shopping cart is to be sent to the CCAvenue pay page you need to ensure that you have converted this amount to INR.

What benchmark to use? No genius in the world can predict at what exchange rate (INR >< US$) rate the end customer is going to get his Credit Card bill as this fluctuates by the minute. So to play safe ensure that no matter what happens the end customer should not see any amount over US$ 10/- on his Credit Card billing statement.

How does one do this?
Lets say the US$ rate today for INR is INR 48.50 = US$ 1. You should take a benchmark of INR 48.0 = US$ 1. Which means that even if the clients' bank is actually using the exchange rate INR is INR 48.50 = US$ 1 the client will only be billed US$ 9.89 / and not the US$ 10/- which he agreed to pay you. (This is arrived at by US$ 10 x 48.0 = INR 480 / 48.5 = 9.89)

Off course you will have to constantly monitor that INR >< US$ rate of exchange and ensure that at any given time the difference parameter is maintained. However one great factor which works in your favor constantly is the fact that the US$ is constantly appreciating against the INR so even if you do not change or monitor your differential factor for small changes you will still land up charging the customer a little lesser in US$ than that he was shown the bill for. However you must also ensure that you do not under price yourself on the exchange rate too much and do upwardly revise your INR calculation if there is a huge jump in the exchange rates, so that this jump can add to your profitability.

Therefore, when you throw the final amount of your shopping cart onto the CCAvenue pay page, you need to convert this amount at a fixed rate into INR and throw the INR amount only. Your buyer from outside India will see the INR amount on this CCAvenue page (which offers multiple payment options). He will also be told that if he wants to view this INR amount in his local currency he could also use the live CCAvenue currency converter link. This would show him the approximate amount in his local currency, which would be billed to his Credit Card statement at the time of that precise particular transaction. Your customer will be billed in his local currency in his card statement.

RBI insists that Merchants in India settle transactions in INR only and the respective banks give a foreign exchange inward remittance certificate (F.I.R.C.), which we (CCAvenue) then pass on to you (Our Sub Merchant). This takes care of the Income Tax part of things, to enable you to claim exports benefits under section 80 HH of the Income Tax Act.

CCAvenue will issue you a FIRC (Foreign Inward Remittance Certificate) for all overseas transactions done. This will be issued on a quarterly basis. A small documentation fee may be levied.

All transactions will appear as world.ccavenue.com/charge in your customer's Credit Card statement. All American Express transactions will continue to be reflected as www.CCAvenue®.com in your customer's credit card statements. During the transaction and after successful payment we make it amply evident to your customer (on the pay page and by a confirmation e-mail) that his credit card statement will reflect the charge to www.CCAvenue.com.

A refund that is forced by a Credit Cardholder's credit card company is known as charge back. This occurs when a cardholder decides to formally dispute a charge on his/her Credit Card bill, usually because someone else fraudulently used that card number. Credit Cards Permit Chargebacks as per their rules any online transaction can/may also be revoked or refuted by a customer to a Sub Merchant via his card-issuing bank for the following reasons. This is allowable for up to 6 months from date of the transaction.a) The Sub Merchant has not shipped the goods or delivered the promised service. b) The Sub Merchant has taken back the goods /cancelled the services but has not yet issued a refund on the Credit Card. c) The cardholder's Credit Card has been fraudulently used by someone else to procure goods and services - without knowledge or prior agreement of the cardholder.

As CCAvenue® has implemented two new security protocols - Verified By Visa & MasterCard Secure Code, this will virtually eliminate the instance of charge backs for the reasons of `Transaction Not Authorized' in Visa& MasterCard Internet transactions. (To find out more about these protocols please click here.)

CCAvenue's payment gateway service provider, has state-of-the-art fraud screening capabilities to reduce risks. However, if any chargeback is reported by the cardholder, you (sub-merchant) will be liable to pay the amount back to CCAvenue or it will be adjusted with the current balance of your account with CCAvenue; or you will be liable to refund back the disputed amount back to CCAvenue. Please note that this practice is universal and is followed by all payment gateway service providers the world over. CCAvenue has also an in-house team, which will screen all the transactions. Please see the section on fraud reduction tips for more information. In cases which prima facie look fraudulent, the same will be referred back to payment gateway for a further thorough authorization and if it is still authorized then CCAvenue will forward the transaction to the Sub Merchant so as to enable him/her to use his/her judgment whether or not he wants to execute the order or not. The chargeback disputes are normally less than 1% of the total transactions in a year. a) Sub Merchant should keep complete proof of goods being shipped. This could be in the form of a Courier consignment note or Receipt from the final consignee. c) The Sub Merchant can prove that the customer was informed in advance about refunds / return of goods for replacement faulty goods. A CHARGEBACK CAN ONLY BE REVERSED IF THE CREDIT CARD HOLDER FORMALLY INFORMS HIS/HER BANK OR Credit Card ISSUING INSTITUTION THAT HE/SHE WILL ACCEPT THE DISPUTED CHARGE. Fraudulent use of a Credit Card on the Internet is always at the risk of the Sub Merchant. Sub Merchants should keep an internal benchmark for the level of transaction for which he will take a risk, without asking for additional documentation from a customer. Example: ABC Shops has internally set a per transaction limit of USD 500/-. Which means that up to USD 500/-, ABC Shops will process an order without asking the customer to provide additional proof. If the transaction amount is more than the internal benchmark of USD 500/- then proof is required for: a) That this customer owns the Credit Card he is using. b) He is who he says he is. (ID) So ABC Shops asks any customer who does a transaction over USD 500 to send by fax the following:- a) The last statement he received from the Credit Card company, which clearly shows his Credit Card billing address as well as the Credit Card number. b) A copy of his driving license / national identity card / PAN No. / Passport which proves he is the person who has placed the order. When ABC Shops has these documents, then they can go ahead with the customer without any doubts knowing full well that no fraudulent usage is taking place of the Credit Card being used for the purchase of their goods or service.

Once a transaction of say USD 1000/- comes from your site and forwarded to the gateway and authorized in real time, it means that USD 1000/- of your customers Credit Card is blocked from his Credit Card limit that he enjoys for a period of 13 days. For eg. If you customers Credit Card has a credit limit of USD 5000/-, USD 1000/- will be blocked for your transaction for a period of 13 days from the time of the transaction from your site. Your customer after doing transaction from your site, will have only a Credit Card limit of $4000/- left. This $1000/- that is blocked for 13 days will not be reflected in his Credit Card statement until unless you capture the order from your CCAvenue account backend, only after which it will be reflected in his Credit Card statement. Therefore, you have to ship your order within 12 days and capture the amounts from your CCAvenue account backend. If your business model requires that you capture the amount before you actually ship the order and your customer is agreeable to the same, then you may do so. If you don't capture within 12 days, the transaction automatically evaporates from the payment gateway system on the 13th day and the Credit Card limit of USD 5000/- is restored to your customer's Credit Card. You cannot block your customer's card forever. This facility helps Merchants in a way that if they want to cancel or do partial capture within 12 days of the receipt of the order, then they do not have to pay any cancellation charges of 5% on the cancelled amounts. Before the introduction of this facility, merchants had to pay cancellation charges for orders they could not fulfill.

CCAvenue maintains a customer-friendly refund policy. This keeps our administrative costs under control in two ways: First, it reduces the amount of time spent researching customer inquiries; and secondly, it reduces the occurrence of chargeback disputes. (A chargeback dispute is a refund that is forced by the customer's credit card company.)
Granting Refund to customer:
In most situations when a customer asks for a refund, we want to try our best to grant that refund. Here are some guidelines on our refund and dispute policies: The Seller sets a time limit: The sub-merchant is required to set the refund time limit on his/her site depending on the goods sold on his/her site. If a customer is dissatisfied with a product that he/she has ordered, the client should accept the product back and grant a refund. If desired, a client may specify that shipping charges are not refundable; however, we would prefer to refund the shipping charges as well.

A Sub Merchant can cancel an order with out any Service fees being charged only as long as the order is cancelled in the window period (this period is fixed by CCAvenue which is currently set at twelve days). If the sub merchant fails to either capture/cancel in the window period, transaction becomes invalid. No additional cancellation charges are applied.

All payouts will be done in INR. For example: If you have 2 accounts with us, an INR account and a USD account. Your sales from each currency will go into their respective accounts. However, in both case you will be paid in INR.

The banks around the world will identify all charges to the credit of world.ccavenue.com/charge.

No, you may have a web site in whichever country you wish. You will simply be hyper linking to us for the secure, on-line Credit Card processing, so whether your site is across the road or halfway around the world CCAvenue can process your Credit Card transactions!

It is the responsibility of the merchants to link their site to CCAvenue. All technical specs are located on our web site. Depending on the complexity of the merchant's site and technical skills, it will take between 30 minutes to a few hours.

This is initiated by a cardholder with their bank disputing a Credit Card charge from a merchant. This usually happens for one to four reasons. 1) Don't recognize the merchant name. 2) Don't remember purchasing from the merchant. 3) Didn't receive goods or services. 4) Didn't use their Credit Card to make purchase. CCAvenue will produce the receipt for the transaction on your behalf with all the details about the products, approval codes and customer info and send this information back to the cardholder's bank. Points 1) and 2) will usually be resolved with receipt. Point 3) upon discussion with the merchant and the customer can usually be resolved either by showing proof of delivery or re-delivery. Point 4) is more difficult and could result in a "Chargeback".

Up until recently after the 'Clear Copy Request' process, if the cardholder still says it wasn't them and the merchant has no proof of delivery or authorization in writing, then *Visa, MasterCard and American Express will chargeback the dollar amount of the transaction to the merchant. Under the Merchant Agreements with *Visa/MasterCard/Amex they do not guarantee non-face to face Credit Card transactions, even though the original transaction was approved. They would only guarantee the transaction if the merchant saw the card and has a signature from a receipt. These were the rules but CCAvenue would fight for the merchant in these cases and despite the fact, all internet transactions are non-face to face, the banks are willing to review each on a case by case basis.

However, with the introduction of the latest 3 D Secure Protocol this risk of chargeback due to "Transaction Not Authorized" has been eliminated. CCAvenue has already implemented "Verified by Visa" the new online security feature introduced by Visa and will shortly be implementing the "MasterCard Secure Code" as well .