Small Business Credit Cards

To increase sales on your website, you must accept credit cards. To process credit cards, you could apply for a merchant account through your bank or other financial institution.

you must be prepared to accept and process credit cards. Most especially if you do business over the Internet. If you are not prepared to offer a full array of credit card acceptance options, I’m afraid you will soon be out of business. The downside to accepting credit cards is that the merchant is at risk for not only the amount that has been charged, but a charge back fee as well.

Actually there are two ways in which you can accept credit cards on your web site: Using your own Merchant Bank Account: with an Internet Gateway. To do this, you’ll need a bank that will allow you to open a merchant account and provide you with the internet gateway.

The initial costs of opening your own merchant account is generally higher than when you use a third party merchant provider although third party merchant providers typically charge higher discount rates and hold you money for longer periods of time. Some of the more modern and competitive merchant bank account offerings offer completely free set-up and a free virtual or retail credit card processing terminal.

Here is an example of the difference between having your own merchant account through an approved bank versus a third party provider such as Paypal.

Option 1. Merchant account payment processing from a reputable merchant bank entity. In a merchant account, funds from your customers are directly deposited to your personal or business bank account. You therefore have control over your account because it is regulated by the Federal Banking Regulations. You may also easily set up your account to accept credit cards, gift cards, tele-check and other non-cash Internet transactions.

Option 2. PayPal payment processing which in this option your funds are deposited to your PayPal account. However, PayPal is not a bank so the Federal Banking System does not regulate them. At worse, they may freeze your account without you knowing how to unfreeze it. You are also limited to accepting payments based on PayPal regulations and invariably it takes much longer top receive your money from PayPal.

Here, then, are just a few ways of accepting credit cards without a merchant account.

1. Clickbank

If your product is downloadable (such as electronic books or software), you might consider ClickBank.com . For a $49.95 initial fee, you can process credit cards and on-line cheques for $1.00 per transaction plus 7.5% of sales.

You receive additional exposure through free listing on their website and through the search facilities of other websites, such as CBMall.com .

As an added bonus, you have your own built-in affiliate program. You decide what commission (from 1% to 75%) you would like to pay your affiliates.

2. PayPal

PayPal.com has no initial fees. For just 2.9% of sales and $ .30 per transaction (and sometimes less), you can receive money from anyone.

Also, you can pay others by credit card or chequing account without supplying your personal credit information to the payee. PayPal can be used to collect money from your auctions, website sales, or even from friends or clients.

3. PaySystems

PaySystems.com can handle either intangible (downloadable) or tangible (shippable) products. For an initial fee of $49.00, you can accept all major credit cards as well as online checks. Fees are just 3.95% of sales and $1.00 per transaction. Alternatively, you may pay 5.5% of sales and $ .35 per transaction.

For this, you receive shopping cart, integration with third-party affiliate programs (such as ClixGalore.com ), fraud screening, multi-currency transactions, toll-free support, marketing tools, and more.