Accept Credit Cards

eCommerce Merchant Accounts- eCommerce merchant accounts are merchant accounts designed to facilitate online transactions involving credit cards. For more information about ecommerce merchant accounts, keep reading this eCommerce merchant accounts review.

What Is eCommerce?

eCommerce is the practice of engaging in buying and selling online. It can be undertaken in addition to retail sales in which customers come into a storefront, or as a completely separate enterprise. A merchant account is a bank account that allows merchants to accept credit and debit card transactions. An eCommerce merchant account, sometimes called an Internet merchant account, enables cashless commerce over the Internet.

How an eCommerce Merchant Account Works

With an eCommerce merchant account, you can set up a Payment Gateway to handle the credit and debit card transactions that come through an ecommerce website. The Payment Gateway is the system for authorizing online transactions. When your customer proffers a credit card payment, the transaction is submitted through the Payment Gateway—the online version of a Point of Sale (POS) terminal sitting on the counter in a storefront. From the Payment Gateway, the transaction is passed securely to your Merchant Account bank and is sent on to the Credit Card Network, which manages credit card transactions. It is the Credit Card Network that submits the request to the bank from which the customer’s credit card was issued, which approves or denies. The banks decision is relayed back to the Payment Gateway, from which the confirmation or denial is reported to both you and your customer.

How to Find an eCommerce Merchant Account That Suits Your Needs

Finding an eCommerce merchant account that suits your needs starts off with knowing what organizations called merchant account providers, offer them. There are three main types of organization that offer eCommerce merchant accounts: payment acceptance sites, like Google and PayPal; financial institutions, like Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase; and specialized merchant account companies, like MerchantAccount.com or Charge.com. Some have multiple programs or levels, so be sure to check them all.

Finding the best merchant account for your business involves a combination of finding the services you need and choosing the merchant account that is most cost effective for the way you do business. You may also want to take into consideration whether it seems that the merchant account will be scalable as your business grows.

For one thing, you should consider the fees. Find out if there is an application fee, a monthly or annual fee, or a set-up fee. There definitely will be transaction fees of some kind, but you need to know exactly what they are. Often there is a per transaction fee as well as a percentage fee, and the percentage fee goes down as the amount of business you do goes up. There may be extra fees for setting up the ability to accept transaction with Discover Card or American Express, so if you want to accept one or both of these, make sure you consider this. Extra fees may apply for orders received by phone, mail, or fax, to receive an annual statement, to support compliance with the Payment Card Industry standards), as well as for gateway setup, and chargebacks or retrievals. It is usual for the basic setup to include the processing of debit cards with a PIN entered for confirmation, and the processing of non-pin debit cards may incur a special fee, as may loyalty cards, gift cards, and check cards.

As you consider your choices, look for information about how disputes are resolved. Also think about what you get along with an account. Is it FDIC insured? Is there fraud protection? What kind of customer support and tech support are offered and are they 24/7? Is a shopping cart included? Are there add-ons that you can include, if you like? If so, what do they cost?

Merchant W.H.

Charge.com

MerchantExpress