Credit card processing for small business

Last Updated on Monday, 11 January 2010 04:38 Written by CC editor Wednesday, 30 December 2009 11:22

Are you having difficulties finding a bank or service that will process your business’s credit cards?

The problem with merchant accounts

A problem many small businesses have, home-based, Internet, mail-order, a like, is finding a bank or financial institution that will process their credit card orders. For starters, there are not many banks that offer merchant accounts to small businesses. Merchant accounts are also expensive to set up, with the bank usually charging you a one time set up fee, in addition to the costs you will have configuring and programming a gateway (where the actual order is placed). Setting up credit card processing for small businesses with a merchant account is simply to much hassle.

3. party processing account

Skipping all the other arguments against a merchant account for a small business, if you can even get one, we have the third-party credit card processing accounts. A third part processing account is, in simple terms, an account supplied by a company that let’s you use their merchant account. In reality, companies that offer these products are highly specialized, often focusing solely on providing their customers with credit card processing facilities. This includes back-end services like online account statements, statistics, refund options, etc, and on the front-end they usually offer a configurable payment gateway that you can brand to your liking, or a payment interface that you can plug-in to.

Advantages

The advantages for a small business that need to process credit cards is that the third-party processing accounts are usually a lot cheaper and easier to set up then merchant account. Remember, the companies offering these services have specialized in providing small businesses easy to use services. Here is a list of the common features:

• Low set up fees
• Minimal paper-work (if any)
• Advanced fraud protection
• Recurring payments
• Management account
• Virtual merchant account (or Internet merchant account)

Conclusion

If you are own a small business and need to accept credit cards, and a merchant account is out of reach or is simply too expensive, then a third part credit card processor might be the solution. As I mentioned above, the minimal paper work, low set up fees and easy customization of the payment gateway mean you can be up and running in no time. Credit card processing for small businesses has never been easier!