Authorize.net is a United States payment gateway service provider. Merchants use it to accept credit card and electronic check payments through their websites over an Internet Protocol (IP) connection. Visa Inc. owns the company.
History of Authorize.net
Creator: Jeff Knowles. Year: 1996.
Jeff Knowles founded Authorize.net in 1996 in Utah. The service let merchants accept credit card and electronic check payments on their websites. Customers could enter card and shipping details directly on a web page. Other options made customers sign up for a payment service first. As of 2004, the company had about 90,000 customers. Its original headquarters was in American Fork, Utah.
In 1999, Go2Net acquired it. The price was US$90.5 million in cash and stock. This was part of a group of companies. Go2Net was backed by Paul Allen, a founder of Microsoft. InfoSpace bought Go2Net in 2000 for about US$4 billion. Lightbridge acquired the company in 2004 for US$82 million. CyberSource acquired it in 2007. The company then had its headquarters in Foster City, California, from 2007 to 2010. Visa Inc. acquired CyberSource in 2010 for US$2 billion. Visa has kept the two as separate services.
Authorize.net focuses on small and medium-sized businesses. CyberSource focuses on international and large-scale payment processing. At the 2010 acquisition, the chief executive named three priorities. They were growth in e-commerce, better fraud detection and prevention, and stronger data security. In September 2004, a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack hit the servers. The attack lasted more than one week. It shut down the payment gateway for long periods.
Changelog and latest update
The timeline begins with the 1996 founding in Utah. In 1999, Go2Net bought the company. It paid US$90.5 million in cash and stock. In 2000, InfoSpace bought Go2Net for about US$4 billion. In 2004, Lightbridge bought Authorize.net for US$82 million. The same year, a DDoS attack shut down the service for more than a week. In 2007, CyberSource bought the company. In 2010, Visa bought CyberSource for US$2 billion. Each sale moved the company to a new parent. The service name stayed the same.
On July 2, 2009, the web infrastructure for Authorize.net went down after a fire at a Seattle data center. That included the main website. Wikipedia records this outage in its history section. The official about page gives current figures with no date. It states that Authorize.net has worked with merchants since 1996. It says the service has more than 445,000 merchants. It says it handles over 1 billion transactions. It says it processes US$149 billion in payments per year.
Latest update: Official about page figures, 2026-10-12 (page checked; no update date shown)
The official about page was checked on October 12, 2026. It reports more than 445,000 merchants. It reports over 1 billion transactions. It reports US$149 billion in payments per year. The page shows no date for these figures. The page also calls Authorize.net a wholly owned subsidiary of Visa. No dated release note was reached. The developer documentation site returned a 403 error code to the research request.
Usage examples
Authorize.net offers a sandbox. A sandbox is a test server. It accepts test cards and sends no real payments. Developers send requests to the sandbox address during testing. They move to the production address after testing. A request is a JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) document. It holds the merchant login ID and the transaction key. The account owner creates both values in the Authorize.net account. Replace YOUR_API_LOGIN_ID and YOUR_TRANSACTION_KEY with your own values. Never place these values in public page code. Anyone who reads the page can use them.
curl -s -X POST \
https://apitest.authorize.net/xml/v1/request.api \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d @request.jsonPosts the JSON file request.json to the sandbox API endpoint. The -d @ option tells curl to read the body from the file. The reply is a JSON document with the result code of the request. The sandbox accepts test data and does not charge a card.
{"createTransactionRequest": {
"merchantAuthentication": {
"name": "YOUR_API_LOGIN_ID",
"transactionKey": "YOUR_TRANSACTION_KEY"},
"transactionRequest": {
"transactionType": "authCaptureTransaction",
"amount": "10.00"}}}Asks the gateway to authorize and capture a payment of 10.00. The merchantAuthentication block holds the login ID and the transaction key. The transactionType value names the kind of payment. The gateway returns the approval status and a transaction ID for the record.
<script
src="https://js.authorize.net/v1/Accept.js">
</script>Loads the Accept.js library from the Authorize.net host. Accept.js lets a page send card details to the gateway from the browser, so the card number does not pass through the merchant server. The page then calls the library to create a payment token.
References
These sources are outside Websnoogie and were checked on 2026-10-12.
Authorize.Net - Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Encyclopedia article on Authorize.net. It covers the 1996 founding in Utah, the owner changes from Go2Net to InfoSpace, Lightbridge, CyberSource and Visa, the 2004 denial-of-service attack and the outages, with cited sources for each date. Readers can check each owner change against the cited source.
About Authorize.net
Authorize.net
Official company page. It states the 1996 start, the status as a wholly owned subsidiary of Visa, and the merchant, transaction and payment volume figures. The page does not show a date for those figures. The figures appear in the same format as the other company statements on the site.
Authorize.net home page
Authorize.net
Official Authorize.net home page for merchants and developers. It describes the payment gateway service, the online payment options for websites and the links to the sign-up and product pages for businesses.
Authorize.net sign-up
Authorize.net
Official Authorize.net sign-up page. A business uses it to open a merchant account and receive the API login ID and transaction key that the sandbox and production requests need. Read the terms before signing up. The page links to the product pages that describe the available payment features.
Who checks your card page?
Would you type your card number into a page that looked unfinished? A shopper who feels unsure leaves before paying, and a card form is where that doubt is strongest. The gateway handles the money, but the page around it still has to look right.
Authorize.net is a payment gateway, a service that passes card details from your site to the bank. Its checkout steps must match the words on your page, or a shopper gets confused. We set up the form fields, the price text and the thank-you step so they follow the same order.
Our $300 build, paid once, includes a contact page and up to five pages. Most builds are delivered within 3 to 5 days. Local search work begins at $190 a month, and it covers the search side of your business.
Call 402-813-4034 to ask how your card page should look and work. Our staff will answer plainly and tell you what each step costs. Send us the address of your current card page, and we will look at it with you. Or choose the button below to see the website package.
