Merchants Account

How To Collect Credit Card Payments On the Web

Custom Search

Once you need to collect credit card payments you will need a merchants account for processing credit cards. When you start to look at all that is involved it will make website creating look like child play. If you thought HTML was hard, this is even worse. Well, at least it looks that way.

I would highly recommend getting help with someone who is knowledgeable in this before going it alone.

Here you will find the most important aspects of an account. The absolute most important is the last one. Yes, the most important more than any of the other ones.

The good news is that merchant account providers all speak the same language and that allows you to make apples for apples comparisons. This will prove to be very enlightening. It is not as complicated as it seems.

The three parts or components of the merchant account fee structure are...

One Time Fees

Could include application fee and or the set up fee.

Recurring Monthly Fees

Monthly statement fee. Almost all charge this fee. It is usually around $10. Some providers call it the Monthly Service/Support/Statement. In essence it is a handling fee.

Gateway Fee

Almost all charge for this too.

This charge only happens when the merchant account uses an internet payment gateway. It is a monthly fee and can be a part of the fee structure of your account processor. The gateway fee can range from about $10 to as high as $30 per month.

There may be an additional per transaction charged by the gateway provider. This is in addition to the merchant account provider transaction fee.

Transaction Fees

This is the fee charged for each transaction even if the transaction is declined.

The most common charge is 20 to 30 cents. Swiped cards usually are at the lower end of the price structure and 30 cents for keying in (not swiping). MasterCard, Visa, American Express and Discover all charge this fee.

You will also need to be concerned with the discount rate.

Making Too Much Money

Most importantly, you will need to know what will happen if you make too much money. Merchants accounts have limitations that most are not aware of.

You read right. If you make more money than you anticipate and you are not prepared for this, you could find your merchant account closed. Even worse, because they do not know you, they could hold the funds for up to 6 months.

No problem you think. You imagine you can just go over to Merchant Account Provider B. It doesn’t work that way. Once provider A says asta-la-vista baby, nobody will deal with you. You are black listed.

All of this even if you do nothing wrong, well, except make too much money. It happened to one successful marketer. He made 4.2 million in the first 12 weeks of his launch. Half was held in escrow for 6 months. He was essentially put out of business for making too much money.

Other Fees

Now you might be wondering...What are the other merchants account Fees?

Next: What are the other Merchant Fees? 4 of 4

How do I Start Using Credit Cards? 1 of 4

Third Party Processors 2 of 4

Go to top of Merchants Account

Assist2web.com Home: DIY Website Traffic Generating Resource