Merchant Account Processing

Merchant Account Processing is a service offered by a number of well known companies. For example you could have a Visa merchant account or a Mastercard one or even a Wells Fargo. It really depends on what you need for your business as to what type of credit card processing service you require. If you accept transactions from clients outside the USA, you may need to consider an international merchant account.

If your business is deemed to be high risk for example one involved in gambling, travel etc then you might have to go for a high risk merchant account. If your are involved in the adult entertainment industry then your choices of who to use to provide your ecommerce merchant account will be more restricted.

So why do you need a virtual terminal credit card processing system when you could use a third party merchant account processing service? Online buyers are becoming more sophisticated and they really expect to see credit card processing facilities on the website from which they are making the purchase. In the past it was common to be redirected to a third party site in order to complete your purchase but now this could have a negative impact on your conversion rates. The more hoops you put in place for your potential clients to jump through the more likely you will lose the impulse buyers and thus your profit margin will decrease.

A merchant account processing service will involve using a credit card payment gateways system. This allows you to collect credit card payments in real time much the same as a restaurant or hotel would. This can either be via a point of sale system if you are dealing with the client directly or a gateway system on your website. The gateway can work in one of two ways either by allowing the merchant to log into a virtual terminal and key in credit card numbers or else the shopping cart system employed by the webmaster on his site will connect to the gateway via an API.

When you open a merchant account facility be sure that you are dealing with an authorized and registered provider. They are required by both Mastercard and Visa to publish a full disclosure and if you do not see this, then run away. Merchant account fees vary considerably from one provider to another. Deciding which is the best operator for you is made more difficult by the fact that they don’t all charge their fees in the same way. For example some will charge you per item they process while others work on a percentage fee of the volume of business processed. When you go shopping for a merchant account provider services make sure that you are comparing like with like.

Obviously charges are not the only concern. It is pointless being with a cheap provider if their systems are always down as you will lose out on sales. Similarly if you work in the 24/7 global market, you want a provider who provides this level of support and not one who limits their support to US hours on a Monday to Friday basis. Why? You are almost guaranteed that your system will fail outside their business hours.

You should also try to work with a merchant account processing services provider who understands your business so if your clients contact them direct, they know what you do and how to help them. Obviously you are not expecting them to deal with customer service enquiries. They just need to know enough to help the customer pay for the product via their credit card and deal with any security or fraud issues they may have.