How payment processing works: one $69 order from the Pay button to your bank account

Payment processing works in two halves. At the moment of purchase, your gateway passes the card details to your processor, the card network routes an authorization request to the bank that issued the card, and that bank approves or declines. Over the following days the sale is captured, cleared and settled between the banks, and your acquirer pays you the amount minus its fee.

How payment processing works for one $69 order

A buyer watches your video sales letter, clicks through to checkout, picks one bottle at $69 and pays with a Visa credit card. Open each stage to see what happens, why it matters to you and what can go wrong:

The life of one $69 order

Open a stage to see what happens there

1. 1Pay
2. 2Authenticate
3. 3Authorize
4. 4Capture
5. 5Clear
6. 6Settle
7. 7Dispute

1The buyer presses Pay

What happens: Your checkout collects the card details, and the payment gateway sends them to your processor.

Why it matters: Mistakes made here come back as declines.

What goes wrong:

• A form that accepts a mistyped number or a past expiry date
• No security code or address check, both of which Visa recommends

2Sometimes: the issuer checks who is paying

What happens: With 3D Secure, the issuer can authenticate the buyer, in the background or with a prompt such as a one-time code.

Why it matters: Required for most online card payments in Europe, optional in the US, where stores use it to shift fraud liability.

What goes wrong:

• Treating the liability shift as guaranteed
• Skipping it for cards from Europe, whose banks may decline unauthenticated payments

Read more: 3D Secure: Liability Shift, SCA and When to Use It

3Authorization: the issuer says yes or no

What happens: The card network routes the request to the card’s issuer, which approves or declines. An approval holds $69 on the card.

Why it matters: The issuer decides, and only it knows why it said no.

What goes wrong:

• Generic declines that don’t say why
• Retries the network doesn’t allow

Read more: Payment Authorization Rate: Declines and Retry Rules

4Capture: you collect what was held

What happens: Capturing collects the held amount, at once or later.

Why it matters: For most online card payments a hold lasts about a week; if it expires first, the money is released.

What goes wrong:

• A backorder that outlives its hold
• Shipping an order you suspect is fraud instead of canceling it

5Clearing: the sale reaches the statement

What happens: The purchase details reach the issuer, which posts the charge to the buyer’s statement, usually within a day.

Why it matters: This is where the buyer meets your billing descriptor, often long after watching your video.

What goes wrong:

• A descriptor the buyer doesn’t recognize
• Presenting the sale too late, which Visa ties to dispute condition 11.3

Read more: Billing Descriptor: What Buyers See and Recognize

6Settlement and payout: the money reaches you

What happens: The network nets what each bank owes, interchange goes to the issuer, and your acquirer credits you the sale minus its fee.

Why it matters: Your ad spend went out long before.

What goes wrong:

• A reserve that holds back part of each sale
• Risk reviews that keep an account off the default payout timing

Read more: High-Risk Merchant Accounts for Supplement Brands

7Later: a chargeback runs it backwards

What happens: The buyer can dispute the payment, typically for up to 120 days, and the issuer can take the money back.

Why it matters: Only the issuer can start one, and the networks’ monitoring counts disputes won or lost.

What goes wrong:

• Disputes still arriving months after a strong month
• Refunding after the dispute opened, which doesn’t undo it

Read more: Chargeback Ratio: How Visa and Mastercard Count It

You start the payment and you receive the money, but every decision in between belongs to someone else: the issuer approves, the network sets the rules and the interchange, and your processor and its bank decide when you're paid. When something breaks, the first job is knowing which of them to ask.

Who does what: issuer, acquirer, network, gateway, processor

The Federal Reserve describes a card payment as four parties: the cardholder, the issuer (the bank that issued the card), the merchant and the acquirer (the merchant's bank). The card network, such as Visa or Mastercard, carries the data between the two sides, and specialized processors can do some of the work in between (Federal Reserve).

Online, the payment gateway captures the card details at your checkout and passes them to the payment processor, the company that handles the authorization for you (Authorize.net). One company can fill several roles: Authorize.net sells its gateway and a merchant account together or separately.

Two of the parties decide most of what happens to your money. The issuer approves or declines, and most declines come back classified as generic, with the details discussed only with the cardholder (Stripe). The acquirer carries your risk. Visa's dispute monitoring is the Visa Acquirer Monitoring Program, and Visa's paper on payment facilitators makes acquirers responsible for the acts of both the facilitators and the merchants they sign up (Visa). Underwriting, reserves and dispute limits start there.

When each step happens, from the purchase to the payout

Authorization happens while the buyer is still at checkout. Everything after it runs on the banks' schedule and your processor's:

From Pay to payout: when each step happens

Typical timings for an online card payment

1. At purchaseAuthorizationThe issuer approves or declines.
2. Within the holdCaptureAbout a week for most online card payments.
3. Usually within a dayClearingFor payments authorized first (Mastercard).
4. After clearingSettlement between banksThe network works out what each bank owes (Federal Reserve).
5. 2 business daysFunds availableOn Stripe in the US.
6. 7 to 14 daysA new account’s first payoutTypical on Stripe, by industry, country and risk level.
7. Typically 120 daysThe dispute window closesLonger in some cases.

Three of those dates shape a paid-traffic funnel.

The hold. An authorization only reserves the money, and if it expires before you capture, the funds are released (Stripe). For most online card payments that's about a week, so a pre-order or a backorder can outlive its hold.

The payout. On Stripe in the US, funds typically become available two business days after a payment, and a new account's first payout usually arrives within 7 to 14 days of its first live payment, depending on industry, country and risk level (Stripe). Other processors set their own schedules. Either way, the ads get paid first: at an illustrative $3,000 a day, a new account can spend $42,000 on traffic before its first payout lands.

The dispute window. Card networks typically let cardholders dispute a payment within 120 days, longer in some cases (Stripe), so money in your bank isn't final money. Visa and Mastercard also count those disputes against your account, whether you win them or not.

Where the fee on a $69 order goes

You never get an interchange bill. The card network sets interchange and your acquirer pays it to the card's issuer, while you pay your acquirer a merchant discount that covers it (Federal Reserve). The fee you pay has three parts: interchange for the issuer, network fees (the networks' own scheme fees, which can include authorization and cross-border fees, per Stripe) and the processor's markup. On interchange-plus pricing, the processor passes the first two through at cost and adds its markup. On a flat rate, you pay one percentage plus a fixed fee per transaction, whatever card the buyer used (Stripe).

Interchange is the part anyone can look up. Since April 18, 2026, Visa's US table puts consumer credit cards used online in a "Card Not Present Fee Program", with rows such as "Product 1" and "Non-Qualified Consumer Credit". The same $69 order costs very different amounts depending on the card:

Interchange on the same $69 online order, by card

Four rows of Visa’s US table, rates effective April 18, 2026

Debit, from a bank with $10 billion+ in assets0.05% + $0.21, plus $0.01 with the fraud-prevention adjustment$0.25

Credit, “Product 1”, All Other Products1.89% + $0.10$1.40

Credit, “Product 1”, Visa Infinite Spend Qualified2.60% + $0.10$1.89

Credit, “Non-Qualified Consumer Credit”3.15% + $0.10$2.27

The smallest bar is set by regulation. For debit cards from issuers with $10 billion or more in assets, the Federal Reserve's Regulation II caps interchange at 21 cents plus 0.05% of the sale, plus up to 1 cent for issuers that meet its fraud-prevention standards (Federal Reserve). Visa's April 2026 table still applies that cap. In August 2025 a federal court in North Dakota found the regulation contrary to law, then put its ruling on hold while the Fed appeals (ABA Banking Journal). The Eighth Circuit heard the appeal in May 2026 (Courthouse News) and had not ruled as of October 2026, so check before you plan around the number. On a big bank's debit card, the same bottle carries less than a fifth of the interchange it carries in the cheapest credit row above.

That spread is what a flat price has to absorb. Say your processor charges an illustrative flat 3.5% + $0.30: $2.72 on the $69 order. With a card in the "Product 1, All Other Products" row, $1.40 of it goes to the issuer and $1.32 is left for network fees and the processor. With a card in the "Non-Qualified" row, the issuer takes $2.27 and $0.45 is left. Interchange-plus shows you each card's real cost instead. Which model is cheaper depends on your card mix, so compare offers on your effective rate: a month's fees divided by a month's card sales. If 600 orders at $69 bring in $41,400 and the month's fees come to $1,630, your effective rate is 3.9%, and that's the number to hold against any quote.

RevvyScales' profit tracking, on the Growth plan and up, subtracts gateway fees from revenue along with ad spend and product costs, so the margin it shows for each campaign is the margin after fees (profit tracking).

Merchant account, payment facilitator or merchant of record

How you're signed up decides who carries the risk, whose rules you follow and who answers the disputes. A supplement brand has three options:

Three ways to take card payments

You’re the merchantYour own merchant account

You sign with an acquirer directly, after its underwriting.

• Terms and any reserve set for your business
• Refunds and chargebacks are yours

The catch: paperwork and time, and a supplement brand may be treated as high risk.

You’re a sponsored merchantPayment facilitator

A provider signs you on behalf of its acquirer and receives your settlement first.

• The provider holds the relationship; Visa’s merchant rules still apply
• You stay the merchant of record: refunds and chargebacks are yours

The catch: the provider’s own risk reviews decide reserves and holds.

Someone else is the merchantMerchant of record

Another company sells to your buyer and is legally responsible for the payment.

• It handles refunds, chargebacks and sales tax
• It carries compliance duties such as PCI DSS

The catch: much of the control sits with that company.

The payment facilitator route has a ceiling. Once a sponsored merchant's annual Visa sales pass US$1,000,000, Visa requires the acquirer to be added to its agreement (Visa). A footnote in Visa's overview of the model excludes high-integrity-risk merchant categories and merchants that take advance payments, and points to the Visa Rules for details, so a supplement brand nearing that line should ask its provider what applies.

"Merchant of record" is industry language rather than the networks'. Visa's own papers describe merchants, payment facilitators and marketplaces, and the marketplace is the model in which the platform handles refunds and disputes between buyer and seller. Whichever set-up you choose, get three answers in writing before the first sale: who the buyer's bank sees as the merchant, who answers the disputes, and who can hold back your money.

Where a sale can still come undone

Three parties can still stop the money: the issuer, the cardholder and your provider.

A decline is the issuer's call. It comes before any money moves, and the response code says whether you may try again. Visa allows no reattempt on a decline the issuer will never approve and, since May 2025, 20 reattempts in 30 days on the other kinds, according to processor documentation (Checkout.com). Measuring your approval rate shows what those declines cost you.

A chargeback is the cardholder's move. It runs the chain backwards, and only the issuer can start one (Mastercard). On Stripe the disputed amount and a fee come out of your balance at once, and the amount stays held until the case is decided (Stripe). Answering it is chargeback representment, with deadlines and evidence rules of its own.

A reserve is your provider's cushion. Stripe describes it as a temporary hold on part of your funds to cover expected future disputes, set on industry conditions, payment activity, dispute rate, refund rate and financial stability, and says it doesn't stop you accepting payments (Stripe). Shopify Payments' risk factors include extended billing cycles, heavy chargeback activity, rising refunds, long delivery timelines and big volume surges (Shopify). A subscription offer with a slow warehouse and ad-driven spikes can tick several boxes at once.

Three questions to check the map:

Who does what? A quick check

1. A card comes back declined with code 05, “Do not honor.” Who refused the payment?

   Your payment gatewayThe card networkThe bank that issued the cardYour processor
   Show the answer

   The bank that issued the card. The issuer approves or declines; the gateway, the processor and the network carry the request to it and back.

2. Who decides when the money from a sale reaches your bank account?

   The card networkThe bank that issued the cardYour processor and the bank behind it
   Show the answer

   Your processor and the bank behind it. The network settles between the banks, but your processor sets the payout schedule, which on Stripe depends on your industry, country and risk level.

3. When would the proposed Visa and Mastercard settlement change your rates?

   It already has, since November 2025Since its preliminary approval in June 2026Only if the court gives final approval
   Show the answer

   Only if the court gives final approval. Preliminary approval opens notice and comments; final approval is still the court’s to give.

What to ask your processor before you scale

Most of this stays invisible until it costs you, so ask while you're still small:

1. Which pricing model am I on? On interchange-plus, ask to see interchange and network fees per payment. On a flat rate, work out your effective rate.
2. When do I get paid? Your settlement timing, the payout schedule and what could move your account off the default.
3. Is there a reserve? The percentage, the holding period and what releases it, in writing.
4. How do retries count? Whether automatic retries count toward Visa's 20 reattempts in 30 days, and whether you'll see the raw decline codes.
5. When does 3D Secure run? Always, only when an issuer asks, or on rules you set. Which orders should get it depends on where your cards and your fraud come from.
6. What will buyers see on their statement? Make the descriptor the brand from your ad (billing descriptor).
7. What does a dispute cost, and how long do I have to answer? Your processor sets its own deadline, often one to three weeks.