In order to accept credit card payments from your customer you must have a merchant account.  A merchant account allows you (the merchant) to process charges to customers' credit cards.  BATS does not process credit card charges nor does it store any identifiable credit card information in BATS system.  BATS only provides the interface to your merchant processor so that you and your customers can safely and securely store credit card information and process credit card charges.  BATS is a fully PCI compliant platform because only the minimal card information is stored in BATS database, only for the purpose of identifying which credit card is stored for which customer.  You can see here how this process works in BATS.

BATS integrates with several merchant account providers and the largest processor gateway (Authorize.net) to enable you to securely store customer's credit card information and process charges to customer's credit card with a click of a button.  You can see how this process works in BATS by watching this tutorial video.

Merchant Service Providers are third-party companies that processes payments and provide credit card processing services, and act as the liaison between the company (you) and the bank (or financial institution).  In order to accept Credit Card payments from your customers you must have a merchant account.  Most Merchant Service Providers use Authorize.net Gateway to provide this service, hence why BATS integrates directly with Authorize.net platform.  Just ask your Merchant Service Provider to enable processing via Authorize.net Gateway for your credit card transactions, then you can simply integrate with BATS by following these steps.

Authorize.net also offers Merchant Services, in addition to being a Gateway that many other Merchant Service Providers use.  It is important to understand this distinction, that you don't have to sign up with Authorize.net Merchant Services in order to gain access to their Gateway platform.  

In addition to Authorize.net integration, BATS integrates with the following merchant providers to give you the flexibility to connect with the merchant that best fits your business needs: