How to accept credit card payments in Bermuda

If you run a Bermuda business and want to take card payments online, most roads lead to Authorize.Net, because it is the gateway the local banks already work with. Other gateways exist and some are cheaper. The question that decides it is whether your bank will settle transactions from them, and that is worth asking your bank directly rather than taking anyone’s word for it. What follows assumes the usual answer.

The four points a payment passes through

Every card payment you take online passes through the same chain, and it helps to know who is who before you pick a path:

Worth having that chain in front of you when you compare quotes. A low setup fee for “payment integration” is usually pricing step two only. Steps three and four are billed to you regardless of who builds the page.

Three ways to get set up

Set it up yourself, for free. You open your own Authorize.Net Gateway Only account directly and handle the configuration. This is genuinely free from a Bermuda web developer’s side, you just need someone to email you the referral link, since Authorize.Net requires a referring merchant for new Bermuda accounts.

Get the gateway configured on a site you already have. If your website can already technically take payments but the gateway itself needs setting up, connecting, and test-running, that is a one-time configuration job, not a rebuild. Ask specifically whether the person doing it needs access to your website to do it. If they do, that is worth knowing before you hand over a login.

Have the payment page built for you. If you have no way to take payment at all yet, a dedicated payment page needs designing, building, and testing, receipts, fraud filters, and staff training included, and this is the option that costs the most because it is the most work, not because of anything Authorize.Net charges differently.

Does the setup need access to your website?

Worth asking before you agree to anything. Configuring Authorize.Net on a platform that already supports payments is normally possible without a login to your site, so if somebody needs one, there should be a specific reason they can give you.

Security, once you are live

Connecting the gateway is the smaller half of the job. The settings that limit fraud, filters set to decline rather than monitor, restricted logins, one account per staff member, are commonly left as they came, and defaults are where a lot of avoidable trouble starts. The Authorize.Net security checklist walks through them, ranked by how urgently each one closes a real hole.

If you want to talk through which of the three paths above fits your situation, dot.bm’s payments page has the current pricing for each, or you can start a conversation directly.