A merchant account allows you to accept credit card payments online. In order to accept credit card payments, you are required to apply for a merchant account and online payment gateway. What you will need is a real time credit car processing gateway that will authorize and decline credit cards while the customer is on your website. The web hosting company will provide the merchant account and gateway. There are usually fees that come with this set up. Setup and monthly fees are associated with having a merchant account.
95% of all orders made online are with a credit card. The fact is that your businesses success or failure can depend on whether or not you accept credit card orders.
You must make sure that the merchant account and payment gateway is compatible with the shopping cart your site uses.
All Merchant Account Providers provide merchants with their own merchant account, online processing of credit cards (Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover), shopping cart links, virtual terminal, and site enablement.
Here is a list of top merchant account providers: Paymerica, CDG Commerce, Paypal, and 2CheckOut. Authorize.net is another popular source for applying for a merchant account and gateway.
To start payment processing you will need the following requirements:
• Order Form
• Gateway – for processing credit card information
• Shopping Cart – compatible shopping cart for your ecommerce store to take online purchases
• Secure Server –to prevent hackers from stealing credit card information. SSL encryption will prevent this from happening.
• Merchant Account – process, authenticate and authorize transactions
Follow the list of requirements above and you will be ready to start your online business!
This article is written by the owner, Christina Ebeling, at a web development company that offers web development services in Edmonton, Alberta to clients all over Canada.
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