Accepting credit cards- The right way to do it

danpiro — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 20:38:20 +0000

There is no arguing that the ability to accept credit cards helps businesses grow, but this growth comes with a price.

Before you kick start the process that will enable you to accept credit cards, please memorize: there is no such thing as the “Cheapest” merchant account! In the world of merchant accounts there is no “one size fits all”. Picking the “Right” merchant account for your business means going through a well organized decision making process, that will allow you to compare several offers, weigh pros against cons and eventually choose the merchant account that is the most suitable for your business. Through the process you will learn that different providers vary by the type of accounts they offer (direct – with an acquiring bank or third party), terms of contracts, fees (and there are quite a few of them around) and the mixture of fixed and per transaction fees.

An effective decision making process, with respect to credit card processing, should be combined of these stages:

Checking the real need for accepting credit cards, i.e. making sure you can foresee a market expansion that would be attributed to new credit card shoppers.
Trying to evaluate the size and volume of potential transactions that will be performed using credit cards (it might be a good idea to learn from your competitors). Make conservative assumptions about the growth in the volume of transactions and the size of each transaction, for the next few months and few years.
Gathering information about your profit margins.
Gathering few offers (3-4) from different merchant account providers (you can use www.creditcardprocessing-r-us.com for this purpose).
Running a model, using the information gathered in stages 2. and 3. to comparing your earnings under each of the options gathered in 4., checking how much you will have to pay and how much you are left with under each option.

Finding the right merchant account will help you make sure your business can handle it.

If the process ends with positive results then it is time for you to start accepting credit cards!

Credit Card Processing made easy

danpiro — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 10:22:06 +0000

This blog is will discuss different aspects of credit card processing, aiming to help readers make well-informed decisions when choosing their payment processing solution and then process credit cards in a more cost effective manner.

Issues dealing with credit card processing and merchant accounts, including high risk, offshore and international merchant accounts, and more, will be discussed here, based on our accumulated experience. Any issues that are worth sharing will be discussed here.

We hope this blog will contribute to a more knowledgeable and transparent credit card processing.

Enjoy