Wednesday, April 04, 2007

Internet Merchant Services

As the name suggests, Internet merchant accounts enable a merchant to accept credit payments online. The primary criteria for this is a merchant should have an account with any financial institution or bank. This is necessary to accept credit card payments that are deposited to this account.

It is important to point out that most local financial institutions or banks do not usually provide for Internet merchant accounts. This is because direct face-to-face transactions involve the customer's signature, while online transactions may sometimes result in credit frauds. In this case, as an alternative there are many acquiring institutions that can assist you in setting up these accounts. If you utilize the services of the acquiring institutions, you must make sure that the account can access any of these networks: EDS, Nova, Vital, First Data Merchant Services, Norwest or Paymentech. Also, keep in mind that these financial or acquiring institutions charge a fee for their services. Some may charge a monthly fee, as well as a monthly statement fee. All institutions charge a percentage of the transaction.

Before a credit payment is actually made, the customer's credit card information needs to be validated. There is a code that checks credit card numbers, credit card types, expiration dates and payment amounts. Aside from validating information, the code also enables acceptance of this information.

Whatever acquiring institution you choose, make sure that there is adequate fraud protection. Since transactions are online, you will also need a website. If you search the net, you will come across many websites providing online merchant transaction services.

Merchant Account Services

Check out any store and you will find that people no longer find it viable to make payments in cash. The preferred mode of payment is the debit card or the credit card. No matter what your business, the best way to stay ahead is to give the customers the ease of making the payment in the mode they choose. This means if they don’t want to pay cash, you must have the provisions to accept credit card payments. In fact studies have shown that accepting credit payments can increase your sales manifold. To accept credit card payments, you will need an online merchant account with a bank, financial institution, or acquiring institutions. All these institutions charge a minimal amount of fees for their services, but then the fee is well worth the improvement in your business.

Your financial or acquiring institution should be able to provide a number of services. First and foremost they should be able to provide you personalized services in setting up your account. Your merchant account should have facilities for online trading, as also taking orders on the phone.

Now, suppose your business is an online store. This means, your customers can make orders merely by the click of a mouse. They can make their payments online through credit card. For this, there will be a form in which they will submit their details including that of their credit card. To accept online payment, you can link your account to any of the Internet gateway solution providers, which include Verisign, Orbital, or Fast Transact. You can link your order forms to these gateway companies, who will then process the transactions.

Then there is the phone line processing services. That means the customers can dial a toll free number, and provide the requisite information based on the voice prompts.

Another service is the POS (Credit card service), which enables you to take orders over the phone and fax and process them through a terminal machine.

You also have the option of a computer software program that can store your customer’s details, as these are beneficial for recurring payments.

Merchant Credit Card Services

Studies have shown that you can increase your business sales manifold if you accept credit card payments from your customers. This is because most people are not like to carry cash around, and so using their debit card or credit card is their preferred mode of payment. Suppose, you own an online store where people can make orders by the click of the mouse. It follows naturally that you should be also in a position to accept credit card payments online. Then there may be situations where the people would prefer to make their orders by phone. There are companies that give a toll free number and the people can place their orders and give their credit card information based on voice prompts.

To accept credit card payments, you need to have an online merchant account with any financial institution, bank, or acquiring institutions. These institutions will deposit the money accepted through a website into your account. Apart from getting a merchant account, you must also get a payment gateway. As the name itself suggests, the payment gateway is a gateway, actually a code, which processes and validates the credit card information by sending the information provided to the credit card company and gets an accept or decline message. On getting the accept message, the gateway then transmits the amount from the website to the merchant account.

Address verification is the most important aspect of credit card services, as it is essential to fight against credit card fraud. Some credit card companies ask for the CID or the credit card identification digits.

Software such as the IC Verify (DOS winpopup), PCAuthorize (Windows), or MacAuthorize (Mac) These software are required to process the credit cards.

As a merchant, you can accept credit card information on your own website or on the website of the acquiring institutions, with whom you have your merchant account. These institutions charge a nominal fee for their services, but the increase in sales is well worth the investment.

Merchant Service Providers

You can improve your business sales by accepting credit or debit card payments. This is mainly because carrying cards is both more practical and safe, and people prefer to pay for their purchases through cards rather than cash. Apart from paying in person, when customers actually visit the store, they can also buy goods and services online through the Internet, or also by phone or fax. Imagine losing your sales all because you did not have the means to accept credit card payments. Going by the advantages of accepting credit payments, it only makes sense that you accept credit payments.

For this, you need to have an Internet Merchant account. Customers can then submit their payment online or by phone. The process is relatively simple. You can open your merchant account in any financial institution, bank or an acquiring institution. To understand how the process works, you need to keep in mind that between the customer and merchant there exists a payment gateway, which not only validates the authenticity of the credit card, but also transmits the payment to the merchant account.

Merchant service providers consist of two organizations: one is the credit card processing company that processes the credit card payments and the other is the merchant account service provider. The Merchant service provider companies can provide services for web solutions, mobile solutions, retail solutions, and MOTO solutions.

The merchant service provider companies accept credit cards such as Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and Discover. They also accept echecks. This means you can transfer money from one account to the other-either in the same bank or in another bank. You can also utilize their services to monitor all transactions that take place through your website. Apart from accepting credit cards, these organizations also accept payment through gift cards, signature debits, and Internet auctions. Their services are designed to secure sensitive customer information and prevent any fraudulent transactions

Merchant Services

In times of fast paced business solutions, the concept of E-Commerce is fast gaining momentum. The term basically refers to conducting and accepting payments online through the Internet. Even if you do not have an online store, you can increase your business sales by accepting credit card payments. This is because you may have customers who prefer making their payments by credit cards. To accept payments through credit cards, you will need a merchant account in any financial institution and the services of an Internet gateway provider organization. Processed payments will be deposited in your merchant account.

To connect to the gateway account, your company website will need some technical modifications to accept credit payments. The web developer will add an order for to a shopping cart, where a customer can add personal details as well as credit card information.

As a part of the merchant services, the gateway organization will validate the credit card information by sending the details to a credit card provider company. After the validation, the gateway will receive an acceptance or decline message depending on the authenticity of the information. The message will be displayed on the screen. After getting the acceptance message, the payment will be transmitted to the merchant account.

These payment gateways provide payment solutions to web merchants, telephone order merchants, retail and mobile merchants. Web merchants can connect to the gateways through server-to-server connection for submitting transactions to the payment gateway.

There is also the Simple Integration Method(SIM). Here, the gateway monitors the entire transaction process data collection, data procession and response to the merchant. On the other hand, the retail merchants can purchase certified, ready-to-install POS(Point of Sale) solution or a device that is integrated to the gateway organization.