Comparing Merchant Accounts - A Simple Guide To Compare Merchant Card Processing Accounts | Natural SEO

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Comparing Merchant Accounts - A Simple Guide To Compare Merchant Card Processing Accounts

Wednesday, October 8th, 2008 Subscribe To Our Feed

Accepting credit cards online is critical to any company wanting to actively sell products and services on the Internet. At the dawn of online business it was accepted that using credit cards for Internet purchases was not a good idea, because it was forcing a real world technology to the digital world. Startup companies launched “micro payment” currencies such as “beenz”, but they didn’t achieve critical mass. The truth is, approximately 10 years on from the people starting to sell on the web, still typing in credit card numbers to buy online and therefore accepting credit cards when trying to sell goods online is still as important as ever.

Basically, there are two different ways to accept credit cards online. Let’s compare merchant accounts. A business can either go for a full merchant account, which allows the business to process credit cards directly, or the business can elect to use the services of a third party processor, who actually processed the credit card orders on behalf of the company. Obtaining a full merchant account has higher upfront costs, but has lower per transaction costs. Using a third party solution costs less upfront, but has more expensive per transaction costs.

Deciding whether or not to get a full merchant card processing account or use a third party solution is just a question of running the numbers. Consider these different business types and compare merchant account benefits…

Usually, merchants who are actively trading offline and want to start selling on the Internet will be suited to getting a merchant card processing account. Most likely, It’s most likely that they will already have an offline merchant card processing account and will tailor that account to also do “MOTO”, which is “Mail Order Telephone Order” credit card orders and simply means that the cardholder is not there at the time of purchase.

For one-person businesses starting starting to sell on the Internet, it’s strongly suggested that they begin by testing their sales using a third-party payment service. The advantage to the new business is that there’s hardly any initial cost so they can test their business model cheaply and easily. If the market is profitable, they can think about decrease the per-transaction costs by applying for their own merchant card processing account. If sales are poor, they can at least leave the marketplace without having spent a lot of cash to get a merchant account.

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