What are online payment gateways?
Online Payment Gateways are digital services that facilitate secure transactions between you and your customers by authorizing credit card, debit card, or other payment methods.
They act as intermediaries, ensuring the secure transfer of payment information between the customer's browser and your website or app.
Key Features of Online Payment Gateways
- Security: Payment gateways encrypt sensitive payment data, such as credit card numbers, to protect against unauthorized access.
- Transaction Authorization: They verify the availability of funds and validate payment details before forwarding the transaction to the acquiring bank for processing.
- Integration: You can integrate them into eCommerce platforms, websites, or mobile apps using APIs or prebuilt plugins.
4 steps to integrate a payment gateway
Integrating a payment gateway into your business workflow is crucial to enable seamless financial transactions and ensure security and efficiency.
Here are the detailed steps to successfully integrate a payment gateway.
1. Research and select a provider
The first step is to conduct thorough research to identify a provider that aligns with your business needs.
You should evaluate features offered by different payment gateways, such as:
- transaction fees,
- processing times,
- user experience,
- customer support, and
- security measures.
Additionally, consider compatibility with your existing systems, such as your eCommerce platform, website technology, or mobile app framework.
It’s always a good idea to look for reviews or case studies of other businesses within your industry that have used these services to get invaluable insight into the effectiveness and reliability of potential providers.
💡 Worth knowing
Popular payment gateways in Qatari include providers such as:
1. Dibsy provides a unified platform for accepting various payment methods, including credit and debit cards.
2. MyFatoorah — Supports local and international payment methods and lets you accept credit cards, debit cards, and contactless payments with safely encrypted transactions.
3. Sadad — Allows you to send and receive payments through the online store, website, portal, and mobile app.
For a more detailed view of the top Qatari payment solutions, jump to our blog about best payment gateways in Qatar to consider.
2. Technical integration
After your documentation is approved, you can begin the technical integration of the payment gateway into your website or mobile app.
Many payment gateways offer a set of APIs or plugins that simplify this process, allowing developers to incorporate payment processing features seamlessly.
During this stage, it’s essential to ensure that the integration includes functionalities such as:
- checkout processes,
- transaction management dashboards, and
- customization options for branding.
💡ProTip:
One of Dibsy’s stellar features is that it provides a single integration for all payment methods into your existing systems and workflows using our powerful API.
This flexibility allows you to create a checkout on your own app rather than sending your customer to another page to complete payment.
As a result, it means less checkout abandonment and more sales for you.
Most importantly, you’ll never have to handle your customers’ sensitive payment data and, therefore, process payments with a high standard of security.
Speaking of security, let's check the next step.
3. Testing and security compliance
Before officially launching your payment system, you need to do some testing to ensure the integration works flawlessly.
For example, you can do various test transactions to identify any potential issues that may arise during the payment process.
Furthermore, compliance with industry security standards, such as PCI-DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard), is vital for protecting your customers’ sensitive payment information.
Ensuring your payment system adheres to these standards not only enhances trust but also mitigates risks associated with data breaches.
💡 ProTip:
Did you know that Dibsy’s system detects real-time fraud and protects each payment by the highest security standards, from PCI-DSS to 3DS2?
4. Go live
After successful testing and ensuring full compliance with security protocols, you are ready to go live with your payment system.
This involves “putting” the integrated payment gateway on your website or app, making it accessible to customers.
Once launched, it's important to monitor transactions regularly to identify and resolve any issues that may arise post-launch quickly.
You should also encourage customer feedback regarding their payment experience. This can help you improve and enhance user satisfaction over time.
How Businesses in Qatar Can Accept Online Payments Using Dibsy?
Dibsy is an all-in-one financial solution that simplifies payment processing with a unified platform that:
- Integrates all payment methods.
- Reduces operational complexity and
- Ensures compliance with Qatar Central Bank regulations.
With our solution, you can accept
- credit cards,
- debit cards,
- digital wallets, and
- local payment methods through a centralized platform.
The process of enabling debit/credit card online payment is quite straightforward.
1. Sign up with Dibsy
After you’ve signed up with Dibsy, you need to complete the Know Your Customer (KYC) form to verify your business details.
This includes:
- your first and last name,
- e-mail address, and
- the name of your business.
We may also ask you for your phone number, as well as:
- valid ID copy of the authorized signatory
- copy of company establishment IDs.
- documentation verifying the legal existence of your business to verify your identity and assess the risk associated with your business.
2. Set up your account
Once verified, you can activate your account and start managing payments through the Dibsy dashboard.
The centralized dashboard allows you to monitor transactions, handle refunds, and analyze business insights.
Some of the activities you can do is to:
- Use powerful search and filter functions to track every payment lightning-fast.
- Add your team members and manage who gets to see what, assign roles and permissions, and streamline collaboration on your payments and account management.
- Create custom payment fields and workflow to keep track of your business-specific data.
3. Choose your integration method
You can integrate Dibsy's payment gateway into your website or mobile app to accept debit card payments using our API.
We’ve already covered the process in one of the previous steps.
There is another interesting method in case you don’t have a website.
Then, you can generate payment links to send to customers, enabling them to pay using their debit cards.
3.1. Payment Links
Payment Links is a helpful tool for accepting and receiving customer payments.
On the dashboard, you can access the payment link, review it, and copy it so that you can send it to your customers.
The links are automatically sent via SMS, but you can also send them via WhatsApp, email, and other communication channels.
The process of creating has a few easy steps. You can:
- Add the name of the payment link so you can easily track it down when the payment occurs.
- Set the amount.
- Set the expiry date. All the payment links have an expiry date that you can set for Today, Tomorrow, or pick a custom time.
- Create a single link type, which means that it's only for one customer. In addition, you can create an open link, which means you’ll send it to multiple customers. It’s a good solution if you create a link for a specific product or
service. For example, you run a gym, and you want to send a single payment link with the membership fee to all your members.
Once the link is created and sent to your customers, they will be able to choose two payment options: either via their credit card or the standard local bank debit card.
4. Security and compliance
Dibsy is licensed by the Qatar Central Bank, ensuring compliance with local regulations. In addition, we use the highest security standards from PCI-DSS to 3DS2.
- PCI-DSS Compliance: Dibsy fully complies with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS), ensuring that all payment data is processed, stored, and transmitted securely.
- 3D Secure 2 (3DS2): Our system implements 3DS2 authentication to enhance transaction security and add an extra layer of protection against fraudulent activities.
- Tokenization: We employ tokenization to protect sensitive payment information by replacing card details with unique tokens, reducing the risk of data breaches.
5. Test and activate
You can use our comprehensive testing environment before going live to ensure seamless integration with Dibsy's payment solutions.
Upon registration, you'll gain access to Dibsy's production-like sandbox environment, allowing you to test various scenarios without actual transactions.
As a result, you can check if all payment processes function as expected.
Why should you pick Dibsy as your online payment provider?
With its robust set of tools to streamline and facilitate payment transactions, Dibsy allows you to:
✅ Boost conversion and gain more customers by offering them the best payment method.
✅ Include plugins and SDK integrations to simplify checkout and reduce compliance costs.
✅ Accept payments in multiple currencies with quick settlement times — twice a week.
✅ Boost customer retention by remembering returning customers and streamlining their checkout experience.
✅ Provide flexibility by enabling your customers to pay different amounts repeatedly.
✅ Smoothly accept payments with our no-code solution.
✅ Maximize your sales with a branded checkout experience.
Enticed to see Dibsy in action?
Sign up for a Dibsy account today and enable your customers to pay with their credit cards quickly and safely.
* Disclaimer: The information in this blog is for general guidance and is based on available data as of March 2025. Please confirm services and terms with individual providers before making a decision.