Need Help Finding a Third Party Credit Card Processor?

November 3, 2008 by Geoff  
Filed under Blog, Merchant Accounts

Finding third party credit card processors is one of the vital things you will be required to do for your e-commerce business. if you lack a merchant acct you will not be able to take sales efficiently which will gravely hamper your business growth.

In order to accept credit card orders quickly and successfully on the Net you will want to opt for a 3rd party credit card processor. There are a number of choices for you to reflect on. Most will charge a start up fee and a portion of each sale. Unlike regular merchant accounts, most 3rd party credit card processors don’t charge a monthly fee and some can be free except for the per item fee. Here’s a site listing 3rd party processors. Let us inspect some of the ones:

Pay pal is one of the most popular 3rd party processors. One of the causes for this is the fact that they do not charge a set up fee. It is also simple to start up on your website. paypal gives good instructions for this and will also offer subscription and shopping cart options for your customers. It is well known but is also has problems. There are limitations on certain regions with pay pal. This type of processing is good to begin with but try to have an alternative one as backup for your customers

Worldpay has a small start up payment, nevertheless it is excellent for global companies. It offers similar services as Paypal.

Another option to third party credit card processing is to get a full blown merchant account and process card orders in the name of your company. This will take longer and may involve different fees for example monthly account charges. The decision as to whether to get a full merchant card processing account or use a 3rd party payment service is just a question of running the numbers.

A Quick Way To Compare Merchant Card Processing Accounts

October 22, 2008 by Geoff  
Filed under Blog, Merchant Accounts

Accepting credit cards online is vital to any website that wants to actively sell products and services on the web. Back in the early days of the Internet it was thought that relying on credit cards was not a good idea, because it was trying to apply a dirt-world technology to the Internet. New companies launched micro payment systems such as “flooz”, but they didn’t achieve critical mass. Here we are, roughly a decade on from the launch of businesses online, still getting our plastic out of our wallets to buy on the web and so accepting credit cards when selling products online is still hugely important.

There are basically two ways to accept credit cards online. Let’s compare merchant accounts. A business can either sign up for a merchant account, which allows them to process credit cards in their own business name, or they can sign up with a third party processor, who processed the credit card charges for the business selling the products. Obtaining a full merchant account costs more initially, but has smaller per item costs. Using a third party processor costs less upfront, but has higher per sale costs.

Making the decision as to whether or not to get a full merchant card processing account or use a third party payment service is simply a question of running the numbers. Consider these different business types and compare merchant account benefits…

Usually, merchants who are already trading locally and simply want to expand online will most likely be more suited to getting a merchant card processing account. Most likely, It’s most likely that they will already have an offline merchant account and will tailor that account to add the ability to do “MOTO”, which is “Mail Order Telephone Order” credit card orders and simply means that the credit card holder isn’t there at the time of purchase.

For one-person businesses starting to sell products online, it’s think about testing their sales using a third party payment service. The advantage is that there’s next to no upfront cost which means they can test their market easily and cheaply. If sales boom, they can eventually look to reducing the per-item fees by obtaining their own merchant card processing account. If the market isn’t profitable, they can at least leave the marketplace without having expended much capital to get their own credit card processing account.