Merchant Processors

Merchant processors are businesses authorized by banks as providers of credit card processing services. To conduct monthly billing or to accept point of sale payments from a cardholder of MasterCard, Visa or another credit card for your products or services through your business or ecommerce website, you will need to be setup with a terminal or other solutions for processing customer payments.

It is important to find and access a good merchant processor that enables simplified financial management of commerce through a network that ensures privacy and security for your customers and doesn’t charge outrageous fees or result in high annual costs. Reviewing their marketing and checking into the specifics of the services and fees will help in finding a provider that isn’t too expensive and provides desirable services.

Sometimes a hosting or web design company will be able to offer options for accepting pay through a secure application and can build a shopping cart that integrates with the payment process.

Things to consider when selecting a merchant processor include monthly and annual rates, the discount rate per debit, the type of cards they accept, whether they offer immediate or express authorization for retail sales, charges for applications, whether they require signing of the receipt or orders by the customer, and how they handle a chargeback or fraud. The reports they provide for the management of your money is also important.

The advantage of using a merchant processor for accepting payments is that you can accept credit cards from your customers which can increase your sales. The disadvantages are that having a merchant account can be expensive, sometimes receipt of payment is delayed, you can be subjected to chargebacks, and there is always potential for fraud.

Sometimes the expense of accepting credit cards can be reduced by using a service such as PayPal that charges a small transaction fee with no monthly or annual fees rather than using a merchant processor.

// posted by BasicMichelle on 10/14/2005 08:31:00 AM / Permanent Link