Accept Credit Cards for Internet Startups:
If you don't accept credit cards through a secure server on your website don't
expect to make too many transactions. While there are other forms of payment a
high majority of transactions online are made by credit card.
You have two choices either get a merchant account and process the cards
manually yourself or outsource the task (and a piece of the profit) to a third
party.
If your business is purely an online one without a physical presence it may
be hard to get the banks to set you up with your own merchant accounts.
Regulations vary from credit card company to credit card company and bank to
bank, as well as the laws from country to country.
You will need to contact your bank for details, otherwise there are many
companies online that will process your transactions for you.
This usually means giving them a percentage of the sale. As an example we use
Clickbank
to handle our credit card transactions to save time and allow us to process a
wider range of credit cards instantly.
While we give up part of the sale they process transactions around the clock
for us allowing us to focus on more important aspects of our business. At the
same time they also power our Affiliate program as part of the same deal.
We have also started using PayPal
as their fee structure is lower and they allow us to accept payment in dollars,
pounds, euros and even yen if we want.
Before choosing a credit card company to outsource to make sure you get
customer feedback and ask the following questions:
-
How do payments work, do they use
direct deposit into your account or do they send you a check?
-
How reliable and consistent are
the payments?
-
How hard is it to integrate into
your current set-up?
-
Will it fit in with your shopping
cart or can they provide one that does?
-
What cards do they accept, and do
they accept international cards?
-
How long have they been in
business?
-
How stable is the company?
|
