Gateway, Shops and Terminals

Let's look at the difference between gateways, shops and terminals. You will also find information about terminal settings and the dashboard functionality.

Payment Gateway

The payment gateway is a merchant environment provided by a payment service provider that authorises credit cards or direct payments processing for e-commerce and POS business.
AltaPay payment gateway is a processing platform that facilitates a payment transaction by the transfer of information between a payment portal (such as a webshop) and the front end processor or acquiring bank.
By accessing the AltaPay Merchant Interface (MII), merchants can view and control their transactions and funding data operating through their payment gateway.

Shops and Terminals

A shop is a logic unit in the MII. Merchants can have more than one shop if, for example, they own two distinct businesses, and it makes sense to group some transaction together.
The shops sit at the top of the hierarchy, under which there are terminals.

Terminals control the payment method, currency and agreement in use. Normally, different terminals are created for different URLs, currencies (exception: multi-currency terminals) and payment methods. (e.g. Credit Cards, PayPal, Sofort, etc).  Sometimes you will see the terms "terminal" and "payment method" used interchangeably.
Once a terminal has been set up, it cannot be moved to another shop.

A shop that offered the Klarna payment method in Danish and Swedish currencies could have the following terminals, among others:
  • Shopname Klarna DKK
  • Shopname Klarna SEK

A user has access to all terminals under a shop and can see all transaction under that shop. Users can have access to multiple shops.

You can see the list of shops and terminals within your area by navigating to Home > Terminal Settings.

In this example, "AltaPay Shop” is a name of the shop; and the different terminals that are held within that shop are listed on tabs down the right hand side.

Terminal Settings

You can click on any of the terminals to view the details.

The terminal controls the payment method, currency and agreement in use. It is set up by the AltaPay Customer Care team. You are however able to make some changes yourself. You can also check if 3D Secure enabled or disabled.

Watch the video to find out more. The password to view it is valitor.


  • Make sure that the Customer Support email and phone number are added. This is not a requirement, but in case of a technical problem in the communication with your website, this information will be displayed to your customers alongside the order and payment ids.
  • You should also set the reporting email. This is used in case any communication problem arises between the gateway and the webshop. In such cases a mail will be send to defined address, detailing the error.
  • Only one email address can be set.
  • You can also set up a customer service phone number if you wish.

Let your technical people handle the rest of the settings.