How to accept online payments in Armenia

If you sell online in Armenia, your customers expect to pay the way they already do every day: with an ARCA card, or from an Idram or Telcell wallet. Supporting all of them used to mean three separate integrations and three dashboards. A payment gateway removes that friction.

The payment methods that matter

• ARCA - the national card system. Almost every Armenian debit and credit card runs on ARCA, with 3-D Secure for online purchases.
• Idram - a popular mobile wallet. Customers approve the payment in the Idram app.
• Telcell - a wallet and cash-network option used widely for everyday payments.

Each has its own protocol, its own settlement rules, and its own quirks. ARCA, for example, is redirect-only - there is no server-to-server callback, so a transaction can sit "pending" if the shopper closes the browser after 3-D Secure.

What a gateway actually does

A gateway sits between your store and each processor and gives you one API, one checkout, and one place to reconcile everything:

1. You create a payment with a single request.
2. The shopper is sent to a hosted checkout and pays with their preferred method.
3. The gateway confirms the result - asking ARCA where needed - and notifies your server with a signed webhook.
4. You see every transaction, refund, and fiscal receipt in one dashboard.

Don't forget the fiscal receipt

Armenian law requires an electronic fiscal receipt (e-HDM) for most sales. Connect your e-HDM to the gateway and turn on automatic receipts, and a receipt is issued when a payment completes, so you are compliant without bolting on a separate device or service.

Getting started

The fastest path is to pick a gateway that already speaks ARCA, Idram, and Telcell and plug in your store via a plugin or the REST API. You keep your own contracts with each bank and wallet, and the money settles straight to your account. That is exactly what Paynet is built for - one integration, every Armenian payment method, fiscal receipts included.