The Steps Needed to Accept Credit Card Payments Online

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First you will need to contact your bank or a third party company to setup a merchant account. A merchant account allows you to accept and hold credit card payments. The next step you will need to take is to create a form on your web site where the credit card information can be obtained. There is a variety of different scripts that can be used to accomplish this task. The code needed is not very complex and it can be written by almost any programmer. If you do not want to write code from scratch, then many are available to accept credit card payments, so you could also just purchase one of those.

After that you will need to purchase a service that will process credit card payments. Many services are available online, and some of these services will also allow you to setup a merchant account with them, so you can accomplish many steps working with 1 company.

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All small businesses require some form of payment processing, so to select a right one is important. Following are some guidelines for the same:

a) Merchant services enable you to process credit card payments from your customers. They are provided companies called merchant service providers or independent sales organizations that offer payment processing. Another source for setting up merchant accounts is the financial institutions.

b) There is no best method of choosing one for your business. It all depends on what and how you feel comfortable dealing with, i.e. with a local bank or with a credit card processor that offers low rates.

c) Merchant account is not required to accept credit cards. An option is to contract option is with companies providing payment processing on your behalf. Their charges are high as they take a larger percentage of the payment received. All credit card providers charge a percentage of each credit card payment received. If you wish to do online selling business, a merchant account is a best option.

If you allow a third party company to process your payments, you will need to put your order form on their site. Moreover, you shall receive payments a few times a month. While with own merchant account, you can receive the same in a few days.

[Thesa]

More guidelines

If one decides to begin payment processing online, you need the following:

• Secure Server with Certification: When your customer enters their credit card information, it is transmitted in “plain data without any coding” to the server hosting the website. To prevent data interception, use SSL encryption to prevent any unauthorized data decoding.

• Order Form: A form on which your customers can input personal and banking information and the order form must be on a secure server.

• Gateway: The gateway allows the authorization, processing, and management of the merchant services. It is the mechanism of transferring your customer's vital information to the processor so you can get paid.

• Shopping Cart: A shopping cart is a software that allows small business to have an e-commerce store wherein the purchases are automatically calculated for you. Ensure the gateway is compatible with the shopping cart.

• Merchant Service Account: You can have a secure server with certification, an order form, shopping cart and a gateway, but real-time processing cannot take place without establishing a merchant account. The merchant account provides access to a processor able to authorize, capture, and settle credit card transactions.

[Thesa]

Other ways to accept credit card payments

One method is to outsource merchant service to a third party. The third party collects your customers' data and does all the work to process payments for your small business.

Another way to collect credit card payments on the web is called “deferred payment processing”. The customer inputs all data and you receive the data manually. With deferred processing, the data does not go through the gateway. An advantage to deferred processing is the ability to inspect all orders and correct them. A disadvantage of deferred payment processing can be time-consuming especially if you have hundreds of orders per day.


Hence, finding the best merchant service option can be overwhelming. Review your options and make the decision based on what your customers would prefer and your small business can afford.

[s.jenkins]

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Anyone have any good or bad experiences? Whats the best deal for rewards?