Send e-commerce payment to credit card, not bank account

Question

I'd like to know if it's possible for an e-commerce vendor to receive payment to their credit card rather than to their bank account. Typically in an e-commerce transaction, here's what happens:

Setup:

1. Vendor sets up an e-commerce website
2. Vendor opens a payment gateway account with a service such as Paypal and may also setup a bank merchant account
3. Vendor connects their website to the payment gateway (API etc)
4. Vendor connects the payment gateway to their bank account by providing acct number etc

Purchase

1. Customer makes a purchase and provides credit card details to take payment funds from
2. Website passes this information to the payment gateway
3. Payment gateway authorizes payment from customers card
4. If authorized, payment is transferred from customer's credit card to the payment gateway
5. Funds are then sent from the payment gateway to the vendor's bank account.
6. Vendor is happy :-)

Is there an e-commerce payment gateway where the payment is transferred onto a credit card owned by the vendor rather than transferred into a bank account?

Do credit card companies allow this kind of transaction? If not, are there any legal/regulatory reasons why this would be prevented? I never heard of a way to do this before.

Answer 1

AFAIK the simple answer is no. The longer answer is never. Credit card processing companies will always want to handle funds directly against a bank account, both from security reasons as well as higher fees that this will cause them.

Technically, moving the funds to the bank account will automatically make the funds available in a credit/debit card. If someone is trying to skip associating a bank account with their merchant account, maybe that's the exact same reason credit card companies won't allow it.

Hope this helps!

Answer 2

No. There is no such service. The closest you can get is to have a check card associated with the bank account the deposits are made into.

Answer 3

The government doesn't like it either - looks like money laundering to them.