Merchant Account, Related Resources

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Accepting Payments Online: An ECommerce Web Site Overview

By: Bobette Kyle

There are a seemingly infinite number of choices and configurations to accepting payments online. Choices range from almost total 'do it yourself' programming to turnkey packages.

You can accept online payments from an ECommerce Web site in two general ways:

1)Through your own online merchant account and/or
2)Through a third party online payment processor.

Accepting Payments Online through your own Internet Merchant Account

Accepting payments online via a merchant account puts you in control and limits your reliability on outside payment acceptance services. This approach can also seem like a jigsaw puzzle. Besides an Internet merchant account, you will need shopping cart software, a store or site host, a processor, and a secure payment gateway.

You may fit these pieces together in several different ways. On one end of the spectrum, you can choose the provider for each piece individually. On the other end, you may choose a turnkey solution, where a single provider has completed the puzzle for you.

There is no single best solution. Your choice will depend on your particular needs and experience. Among other considerations, you should factor in your own comfort with the technologies, customer convenience, providers` service levels, available technical support, reliability, costs, and time commitment involved.

Fees

There are a myriad of potential costs and fees involved in accepting payments online, making it difficult to compare different options.

Potentially, you could be charged fees by each provider involved in helping you accept payments online - application fees, set-up fees, yearly memberships, monthly statement charges, monthly minimums, gateway access fees, statement fees, fixed transaction fees, variable transaction discount rates (processing fee for each transaction), and cancellation penalties are all common.

Often, it is easy to misinterpret the fees you will owe. Rarely are all costs revealed in one place. If you are reading about a merchant account, for example, the quoted costs may not include gateway access, hosting, and/or shopping cart. Because you may be comparing 'apples to oranges', options that at first appear lo....[MORE]