Answer:
D. Payment gateway
Step-by-step explanation:
e-commerce is a short for electronic commerce and it can be defined as a marketing strategy that deals with meeting the needs of consumers, by selling products or services to the consumers over the internet.
This ultimately implies that, e-commerce is strictly based on the buying and selling of goods or services electronically, over the internet or through a digital platform. Also, the payment for such goods or services are typically done over the internet such as online payment services.
A payment gateway can be defined as a merchant service technology used for the capturing, acceptance and transfer of digital payment from the bank account of a customer (buyer) to the bank account of the merchant (seller). Thus, payment gateway typically involves the use of credit or debit card for the payment of goods purchased or services provided.
In this scenario, a merchant bank and a merchant have been involved in a Web-based electronic transaction. Hence, a payment gateway mediates between the two i.e acts as an intermediary between the merchant bank and the merchant.