Accept Credit Cards

Before you begin processing credit card payments on your website, ensure that you have the following in place:

• Secure Server Certification: When your customers key in their credit card information on your website, it gets stored on the server. To prevent any unauthorized interception of such sensitive data, you need SSL encryption.
• Order Form: This is an online form required for financial transactions and provided to your customers to fill in their banking details. The form must be hosted on a secure server to prevent fraudulent activities.
• Gateway: Online Gateway allows the transfer, authorization and processing of customer’s personal and financial information to the main processor.
• Shopping Cart: This allows visitors to shop around for various products and get them billed.

Register for a Merchant Account

The second step toward accepting online credit card payments is registering for a merchant account either at a bank or a credit card processing company. Having a Merchant Service Account allows you to securely process, manage and verify credit card transactions.

If you are a large business and have been around from a long time, you can approach banks to provide you with a merchant account, otherwise you can choose one of the credit card processing companies.

Here’s a list of indicators that can help you stay away from fraudulent merchant account providers:

• Non-Disclosure of Fees
• Inexperienced Sales People
• Small companies with no Track record
• BAD or NO BBB rating
• No Helpline Facility
• Partial Application forms
• Poorly Designed Websites
• Companies that don’t list Prices on their Website
• Companies that don’t have their own in-house customer support

If you accept both credit and debit cards, look for companies that provide the ‘Split Debit & Credit Pricing option’. This will help you take advantage of the pricing available for the specific card types that you typically accept.

Once you have set up a fully functional and secure ecommerce website and registered for a merchant account, the last and the final step is to choose the best processing equipment for your business.

As a merchant you might not know what processing system is right for your kind of business. In most cases, your merchant account provider will also provide the virtual processing equipments for your site and give you more options, making accepting customer credit cards far easier and more convenient.

Choosing the Right Processing Equipments

The basic function of all terminals and printers is to read the credit card information, process it and provide the receipt of the charged amount to the customer. Here’s a look at the most popular processing equipments used by different kinds of merchants:

Retail Merchants: Retail merchants will require instruments that are easy to use, simple and come with a printer. Some examples are Nurit 2085, Hypercom T7-Plus and Verifone Vx510LE.

Keyed Face-to Face Merchants: They can choose either a combination of card readers and printers, or can go in for a terminal-only option. Some examples are Tranz 330 or Linkpoint 3000.

Internet/Online merchants: If you have a high speed internet connection, you can choose Gateway and Virtual Terminals such as Authorize.net, PC Charge etc. These are fully integrated with most shopping carts for real time online transactions.

While the entire process of getting started with accepting credit cards might seem long and tedious, it usually gets completed within 48 hours. Ensure that you follow through all the steps for a successful and trouble-free online business.