Accept Credit Cards

Accept Credit Cards- The ability to accept credit cards may make or break an ecommerce website. Learn the basics of accepting credit cards and the various approaches you can take for credit card processing in this article. Accept Credit Cards!

Why Is Accepting Credit Cards Important?

If a customer comes to a storefront, a variety of payment methods are generally accepted. The customer may pay by check which might add two minutes to the checkout process or by credit card, and what merchant would turn down cash? But with an online order, paying with cash is not possible and paying with a check becomes a drawn out process that can take days or more than a week, depending on the distance it has to cover in the mail. Sure, direct withdrawal from a bank account is now a possibility, but given the choice, a lot of people want to round up their purchases on their credit card and gain some points or make headway towards a cash reward while doing so. This makes accepting credit cards a high priority for most ecommerce sites.

The Various Routes for Accepting Credit Cards

There’s the familiar swipe terminal for credit cards one sees on the counter of most retail stores, but what about etail? There are more ways to accept credit cards than many people know about. Many people know about merchant accounts and payment gateways (and we’ll get to those in a moment), but many people don’t know that both PayPal® and Google Checkout® offer etailers the ability to accept credit cards without the cost, hassle, and complexity of the merchant account approach. Sure, you have less control, and your customers may have to leave your site briefly to pay. On the plus side, you don’t need SSL or to be responsible for your customers’ financial information and it costs less. Of course, some merchants want the professional feel and seamless checkout that comes with a merchant account and accepting credit cards on site, and this is also possible

First Steps to Accept Credit Cards

The first step to accepting credit cards online is choosing a web host and a web hosting package that makes it possible. You will need a shopping cart, an SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate to insure the safety of customer information, a merchant account for credit card payments to go into, and a payment gateway through which the credit card transaction is accepted or denied (though the last two may be integrated together). In order to secure an SSL certificate, you will likely need at least VPS (Virtual Private Server) hosting, and possibly dedicated hosting: that is, shared web hosting won’t provide what you need (though you can have shared hosting and PayPal or Google Checkout.

If you do business, you may already have a bank account, but this is not necessarily a merchant account, even though it’s an account and you’re a merchant. Merchant account is a special term for a bank account held by a merchant for the purpose of carrying out credit card transactions. One account can be used for cards that are swiped, have numbers key-entered during a phone transaction, and transactions initiated online. Your web hosting service may have merchant services available. (They almost certainly will have PayPal and Google Checkout available.)

Payment gateways are obtained along with the merchant account as a joint service or after the merchant account is secured. The payment gateway can be thought of as a virtual POS (Point of Sale) terminal. While VISA® and MasterCard® are typically accepted, acceptance of Discover® and American Express® may require a service upgrade. Debit cards, too, may be an extra service, as may MOTO (Mail Order and Telephone Order) support.

Merchant W.H.

Charge.com

MerchantExpress