Key takeaways
- Your gateway choice affects fees, recurring billing, reporting and how much card data your team ever touches.
- Authorize.Net is widely supported and lists simple pricing; CenPOS suits organizations that need flexible multi-channel processing.
- Look for tokenization, hosted payment forms and detailed transaction responses, whichever gateway you choose.
- Decide how payments will be initiated and reconciled in Salesforce before choosing the gateway.
Taking payments inside Salesforce removes a lot of friction: staff send a payment link from the record, the customer pays securely, and the result appears in Salesforce without anyone re-keying it. The payment gateway behind that flow matters more than many teams expect.
What a payment gateway does
A gateway securely passes card or bank details from the payment form to the processor and card networks, and returns the result: approved, declined or failed, with reference numbers. Good gateways also provide tokenization, so a customer can be charged again without storing card numbers, and tools for refunds, voids, recurring billing and fraud screening.
Authorize.Net
Authorize.Net, a Visa solution, is one of the most widely supported gateways in the US. It offers hosted payment forms, customer profiles for tokenized repeat charges, recurring billing and fraud detection tools, and it has mature APIs that integrate well with Salesforce.
At the time of writing, Authorize.Net publishes two main options: an all-in-one plan that combines a merchant account and gateway for a $25 monthly gateway fee plus 2.9% and 30 cents per transaction, and a gateway-only plan for businesses that already have a merchant account, with a $25 monthly fee plus per-transaction and daily batch fees. Published rates apply to qualified applicants, and your actual cost depends on your processor and volume.
CenPOS
CenPOS is a payment processing platform that supports card-present and card-not-present payments with tokenization, and is often chosen by organizations that take payments across several locations or channels. Its strength is flexibility in how payments are captured and routed. Pricing is typically quoted per merchant rather than published, so request a proposal based on your volumes.
How they compare
| Factor | Authorize.Net | CenPOS |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Published plans, rates for qualified applicants | Quoted per merchant |
| Tokenization for repeat charges | Yes, customer profiles | Yes |
| Hosted payment forms | Yes | Yes |
| Recurring billing | Yes, built in | Supported |
| Best fit | Businesses wanting a widely supported, well-documented gateway | Organizations with multi-location or multi-channel payment needs |
Questions to ask before you choose
- What will our all-in cost be at our real volume and average ticket size, including monthly, batch, chargeback and add-on fees?
- Can we tokenize cards for future and recurring charges without storing card data in Salesforce?
- Do you provide a hosted or embedded payment form, and which PCI validation would apply to us?
- What detail do transaction responses include, for logging and reconciliation in Salesforce?
- How do refunds, voids, partial captures and failed-payment retries work through the API?
- Can we run several merchant accounts, for example per facility or entity, and route payments between them?
Design the Salesforce side first
The gateway is only half of the solution. Decide how payments are requested, from which records, who can send them, how links expire, what is logged, and how failed payments are retried and reported. Those decisions often narrow the gateway choice quickly.
We have built payment integrations with both gateways, including Authorize.Net and CenPOS, and our Payment Gateway for Salesforce package supports both, with encrypted payment links, scheduled and retry processing, multi-facility routing and full transaction logging.
Frequently asked questions
Can we use more than one gateway in Salesforce?
Yes. A well-designed payment solution can route transactions to different gateways or merchant accounts based on rules such as facility, entity or payment type.
Do customers need a Salesforce login to pay?
No. Customers typically pay through a secure, public payment page reached from a unique link.
Will taking payments in Salesforce put our org in PCI scope?
Not if card data goes directly to the gateway through hosted forms and Salesforce stores only tokens and non-sensitive details. Confirm your validation requirements with your provider.
