The present disclosure provides a system and a method for operating a live merchant platform. The disclosure proposes using a live merchant platform, associated with a merchant and an acquirer, to test a range of payment experiences across issuers. The live merchant platform is utilized for authenticating cardholder details and authorizing payment details. The live merchant platform sends an authentication request message to an issuer via a payment network. Thereafter, the request message is forwarded to the core processing environment from a security protocol environment via a gateway environment. Further, the live merchant platform receives authenticated response from an issuer environment via the payment network
