As a business owner or manager, you need to do everything you can to increase revenues and reduce expenses. One way is to examine your credit card merchant account and see what you can do to improve it.
If you don't have a merchant account yet, I highly recommend you get one. Merchant accounts are required for you to be able to accept credit cards. Since more consumers are using credit cards for their everyday purchases, you might be missing out on sales if you don't accept credit cards.
All owners want to find a merchant account service that provides excellent rates, added benefits, and the best help in times of issues, questions, and problems. There is no single service provider who is going to be perfect in every situation so you do your best to investigate, research, and contract the best provider you can find. This will take some time and effort on your part but the search will pay dividends for you and your business by finding the right fit with the right merchant account provider.
Over time most of the providers have settled into a few different fee structures:
- tiered - you pay a different rate based on several factors according to your account profile. Higher risk account will pay a higher rate (higher tier) while low risk accounts will pay less (lower tier)
- interchange plus - you pay a set rate based on the costs to the provider to process the transaction (the interchange) plus an additional fee for the service
Before you start contacting the different providers though, you should sit down and make a list of the important elements you are looking for. Ranking this list will also help you later on when comparing various merchants. Sometimes you will be able to do this research completely online by using a merchant account directory that lists several different providers and compares them against each other directly.
The easiest factor to compare is the cost, rates and fees. They will vary from provider to provider but are typically based on your volume of sales each month, average transaction size, risk, and how often sales are refunded or charged back. If you are in retail or another seasonal business, you might be able to have the provider adjust the rates and fees during the slower periods. Especially if you run into minimum monthly fees.
You will also want to get information and pricing on equipment and software. Sometimes these come with their own fees and can make an inexpensive merchant account turn too expensive. If these are included with your account, check that they are also included with the main technical support. You don't want to have to call two separate companies for your merchant account and equipment.
Hopefully this gives you some information to help you get started setting up a new merchant account or evaluating your existing one. As you are making a list and researching, keep everything organized so you can refer to it quickly. This industry is highly competitive and oftentimes you can use your research to negotiate a better deal with one company.
Good luck.
Author Resource:
Once you are ready to begin your research on merchant account, I have created a directory of information for you about Paypal for business .
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