gateway
A gateway is a service that stands in front of other organisations' APIs and sells calls to them over a machine-payment protocol. The gateway's own host carries the routes and returns the payment terms, and the API behind it does the work.
Gateways describe themselves in their own documents. Sponge describes a payment gateway deployed in front of an existing API, with agents paying per request and no change to the API's code. Orthogonal's documentation gives its paid addresses as its own host followed by the name of an API and that API's path. Locus describes one integration through which each call reaches a provider and is metered and billed.
A route on a gateway can carry another organisation's name in its address. The payment terms it returns are the gateway's reply, so the address to pay in them is the one the gateway states. The name in a route's address and the party that receives the payment are two separate facts.
A gateway is not a facilitator. A facilitator verifies and settles a payment for a seller, and a gateway is the host a buyer calls. It is also distinct from a catalogue, which lists routes and serves none of them.
→ probe402 read the routes carried by payment gateways, and whose payment address each one quoted, in this issue of the Machine Commerce Reality Index.
Sources
Related route · host · facilitator · catalogue · payTo