Elavon, a wholly owned subsidiary of U.S. Bancorp and a global payments provider, has announced the expansion into the Irish market of its online payment gateway for small and medium-size businesses, according to a press release.

The expansion is facilitated by an extended agreement with Realex Payments, a provider of payment gateway products used by thousands of businesses across Europe. The payment gateway is intended to make accepting e-commerce payments easier for businesses. The expansion follows the launch into the U.K. market in 2013.

"We understand that business owners are faced with many challenges and need to work with all kinds of providers to run their business," Andrew Rush, head of international product at Elavon, said in a statement. "The ability to offer a single point of contact for both acquiring and gateway services through our agreement with Realex Payments results in a win-win for our customers and means they have one less business relationship to manage."

In order to take payments online via an e-commerce website or over the phone, businesses need to have both a gateway provider and an agreement with a payment processor. With Elavon Payment Gateway, businesses can get a card payment processing account and payment gateway set up from one company.

Elavon's e-commerce solution provides the following:

• ease of integration and support;
• a single entity for both payment gateway and payment processing services;
• support for all relevant payment methods;
• local risk management in the event of breach;
• tokenization technology allowing a business to securely encrypt and store card information for customers' repeat purchases; and
• Recurring billing functionality to automatically process card transactions on scheduled dates.

​Colm Lyon, founder and CEO of Realex Payments said, "We are delighted to announce the expansion of this relationship with Elavon in the Irish market. In addition to the fully branded gateway solution, we're advocates of innovation and are committed to excellent customer service. Having more than 14 years' experience helping companies sell online, we are perfectly positioned to pass on our expertise to Elavon Online Gateway customers in the Republic of Ireland, helping them to grow and expand their online businesses."

This is a fully PCI DSS Level 1 certified gateway for international and local card processing around the world, regardless of how a business wants to sell its products; through a website (e-commerce), by mail order, or telephone order (MOTO) — or a combination of all three, according to the press release.