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Last updated on Aug 28, 2026
A payment gateway is the service that actually moves money when Advanced Billing bills a subscription. Advanced Billing decides what to charge and when; the gateway carries out the charge and reports back whether it worked.
A payment gateway processes the payment requests Advanced Billing submits on your behalf, as specified for each of your customer subscriptions. The payment gateway notifies Advanced Billing whether each charge is approved or denied. If approved, the settlement process begins via the payment gateway, which deposits the funds into your merchant account.
Approval and settlement are separate events. An approval means the charge was accepted and submitted for settlement — not that the money has arrived, and not a guarantee that it will: an approved transaction can still fail at settlement or be reversed later. The funds reach your merchant account afterwards, on the gateway's own settlement timetable, which is why gateway approvals and your bank deposits are reconciled separately.
Because the gateway is what reports approval or denial, it is also what triggers everything that depends on the result. A denied charge is what moves a subscription toward dunning, so gateway behavior and your dunning configuration are closely linked.
To configure a gateway, see Locate and Test Your Payment Gateway. To compare what different gateways support before committing to one, see gateway features.
See the complete list of payment gateways that work with Advanced Billing.
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