Online merchant credit card account

It is a well known fact that merchants who don't accept online credit card payments lose on 70% of their sales to their competitors.

Web business owners have to set up a merchant account in order to process credit cards online. Online merchant credit card account can be defined as a bank account that are approved by an acquiring bank and facilitates a trader to receive credit card payments online.

Unlike saving and checking accounts that a merchant has with a local bank, these accounts are separate accounts. An online merchant account is actually an agreement between the acquirer providing merchant account and online trader.

Under this contract the acquirer extends credit limit to a business owner who intends to process credit card payment online.

Steps for accepting online payments

In order to setup an online merchant credit card account a trader needs to approach either a financial institution or a third party merchant account provider. Then he should create an online form on his web site which will extract all the credit card information of the buyer.

Various scripts are available to create the form and as the coding is not so complicated, almost any software programmer can create it. Moreover a merchant should ensure that his site is secure enough to allow the acceptance, processing and storage of credit card information and payment details.

For this he should ensure that his web site is setup on Secure Sockets Layer. Most reputable providers, such as Charge.com will guide any merchant through this process so it goes smoothly.

Benefits

By setting up an online merchant credit card account a merchant can sell and advertise his goods services to any part of the globe. Their trade is no longer influenced by the geographical locations and once the merchant goes online he can attract a large number of potential customers.

Online merchant account is well known for ensuring secure transactions, thereby by attracting regular buyers who can advertise his website by word of mouth.

It helps the online trader to keep an eye and track all his online financial transactions. A merchant can apply for a single or multiple accounts and this helps in accepting various cards like Visa, American Express, and Discover etc.

Merchant account fee

An online merchant has to pay an application fee and this fee is charged at the time of submission, of the application form. The application fee is however not refundable and is levied by almost all merchant account providers. For every credit card that is processed, an authorization fee has to be paid to the provider A monthly fee is also charged that incurs all the cost for maintaining the online merchant credit card account.

The business owner is expected to settle their batch at the end of the day .Settling the batch means transmitting all the credit card transaction for that day to a financial institution for payment.

This is done on a daily basis and in case the accounts are settled late i.e. after 2 days a fee is charged by the account provider. There are other fees charged by the provider for like early termination fee, service fee, annual fee and fee for charge backs.

Despite of the fees levied by the account provider, the maximum benefits that an online merchant acquires from online merchant credit card account leaves him spell bound. This online account draws more traffic thereby increasing the sales volume and profitability by ensuring repeat trade.

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