Sep 20 2009

What Is A Business Merchant Account And How Will It Help My Business? Can I Accept Credit Cards?

What is a Business Merchant Account and how will it help my Business? Can I Accept Credit Cards?

A business merchant account allows your business to accept credit cards, and receive payment into your business merchant account. Your business wants to accept credit cards because the majority of consumers pay for their purchase with credit cards. At minimum your business should accept the following credit cards: Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover Card.

In order to have a business merchant account you need to have a business, individuals are not allowed to have a business merchant account. You may not use your business merchant account for personal use; that’s a violation of the terms of service for both MasterCard and Visa. Your business merchant account is for your business and can only be used for your business.

Here is a quick breakdown on how your business will process credit cards via your business merchant account. Your customer will make a purchase and you will use your merchant account to take payment from their credit card. Once the transaction is approved the bank will process the funds from the purchase and deposit them into your business merchant account.

Should my Business have a Website with an Online Product Catalog and Shopping Cart?

Now that your business accepts credit cards you can create a website with your product catalog and have your customers order your products online via your online shopping cart. Your customer can add items to their online shopping cart and your shopping cart can communicate with your business merchant account bank and process their order. This is all done seamlessly via an internet web browser and an internet payment gateway where your shopping cart talks to your bank to accomplish this. You always want to make sure that a secure server is used to process your customer’s personal information.

A secure server will allow your customer to believe that they are dealing with a reputable online business. Having a secure server means you domain name will have a secure certificate installed at the web server. So now shoppers on your site will see https://www.yourdomainname.com/. Notice the https versus http, this means that they are in a secure environment. At no time should an online customer provide their personal information via an insecure environment!

Minimum Start-Up Costs: About $300 for Bare Bones

How much will it cost to set up a shopping cart merchant account and shopping cart software solution? It’s like asking how much you want to invest in property or how much you want to pay for a new car. It can be very inexpensive — use a no-install shopping cart and an integrated package from a leading provider like Yahoo or FreeMerchant and you can get started for about $300. Or you could pay hundreds of thousands for an industrial strength catalog site. Or you could pay somewhere in between. It really depends on how much you have to spend and how much you are willing to invest in your online business.

Happy Shopping!

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