Merchant Account Comparison – A Simple Guide To Compare Merchant Card Processing Accounts

Posted by writer on September 28th, 2008 at 06:37pm

Taking credit card orders is massively important to any business that wants to actively sell anything on the Internet. When businesses started selling online it was understood that using credit cards for Internet purchases was not a good idea, because it applying an offline solution to the digital world. Startup companies tried to offer “micro payment” currencies eg “beenz”, but none of the e-currencies took off. The truth is, ten 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 as payment for products 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 them to process credit cards in their own business name, or they can elect to use the services of a third party payment service, who processed the credit card charges for the company. Getting a merchant account costs more initially, but has lower per sale costs. Using the services of a third party processor costs less initially, but has higher per transaction charges.

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

In the main, merchants who are already trading locally and want to expand online will most likely be suited to obtaining a merchant account. Most likely, It’s most likely that they will already have a real world merchant account and will tailor that account to add the ability to do “MOTO”, which is “Mail Order Telephone Order” processing and simply means that the cardholder isn’t there at the time of purchase.

For micro businesses starting starting to sell on the Internet, it is think about testing their marketing using a third party processor. The advantage to the new business is that there’s next to no upfront cost which means they can test their business model easily and cheaply. If sales boom, they can eventually look to decrease the per-transaction costs by applying for their own merchant account. If sales are poor, they can at least leave the marketplace without having spent a lot of cash to get their own merchant card processing account.

Tags: accept credit cards, compare merchant account, credit card processing account, creditcard processing, merchant account comparison, merchant card processing account, online merchant account, third party processors

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