If you are running a small work from home business than you must know how important it is that, you accept a wide variety of payment modes from customers. Choosing the right merchant to process online payments on your behalf may be difficult and sometimes have a direct impact on your business income. These are questions that you must ask and get satisfying answers before choosing a merchant service.
What is a merchant service?
A merchant service enables your online business to accept credit and debit card payments. The account will be tied to a credit card processor. The credit card processor works with the customer’s bank to route payments to your bank account.
Who offers merchant services?
Specialized companies known as merchant service providers offer merchant services to businesses and individuals. They are independent organizations that sell and offer the payment processing services. In most cases, other financial institutions also offer merchant services.
Which merchant service is ideal for small business owners?
This will depend on the business situation. Home based internet businesses are more likely to be turned down by banks because they are not very established. However, independent sales organizations, commercial service providers and merchant services tend to be more flexible. What is important is that and entrepreneur conducts enough research and chooses the best payment processor that suits the business needs and budget.
What do you need to accept online payment processing?
a) Secure Server Certification – When a user enters credit card information; it has to be sent via an encrypted text form to the host server of the website. This will prevent interception of data and unauthorized decoding.
b) Order form – This is a form on your website where customers will input their personal and credit card information.
c) Gateway – Gateway is a channel where processing, authorization and merchant service management will take place. The gateway transfers the customer’s vital information to the processor where it is processed and paid to your account.
d) Shopping cart – This is a software that allows your online business to have be equipped with an e commerce store. Here, purchases will be calculated automatically for you. However, it is vital that the gateway be compatible with the shopping cart.
e) Merchant service account – Real time processing of the online payments cannot take place unless you have a connection in place with the merchant account. Te merchant account enables the customer to submit payments where they will be sent to the merchant account for processing, authorizing, capturing and settling the whole transaction.
Are there any other ways to accept credit card payments?
Most small businesses outsource receiving credit card payments to third party businesses. The third party is responsible for collecting the customer data and processing all payments.
Deferred payment processing websites is another option for small businesses. Here, a customer enters data but it does not go through gateway. Instead, the data is sent to you manually where you can scrutinize and correct where necessary. This process is cumbersome, time consuming, and is not very popular.
Author Resource:
My name is Kausar Khan and I run a very successful Internet business out of my home. I have been doing this business full time since 2003. Please do visit my websites http://ourdollars.com and http://workfromhome4business.com for more information.
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