With the advancement of technology in various fields and to meet the deadlines in their jobs people have less time to stand in queues for long hours to pay their phone bills, electricity bills etc. This makes it very common for most of the people these days to pay their bills with the help of credit cards. If you want your business to run successfully you should be able to accept these credit cards. Most of companies these days have resorted to accepting credit cards so that they don’t lose their customers.
For accepting credit cards the first requirement that a business should have is the merchant account. Having a merchant account would enable you to accept the credit card without any hassles. It is usually advised that businesses have their individual merchant accounts but small business prefer to process their credit cards through a third party. But when the business is big and most of the customers prefer paying by credit cards then it is important that the business sets up its own merchant account. If the business does not have the convenience of accepting credit cards then it should be prepared to lose its sales.
Most of the banks provide merchant accounts to businesses. So when you are on the look out for a merchant account the first place that you should approach is your bank with whom you do all your business transactions. The banks give out merchant accounts on charging some amount of fees. Besides banks there are a number of online companies also that provide merchant accounts. Processing of credit cards becomes much easier with the help of merchant accounts.
When you deal with a bank for your merchant account the bank will transfer the money into your account within a day or two of the sale and then would later collect the money from the account of the customer. In return of the
Services you would have to pay the bank a commission of 1.5% to 5% for every credit card transaction that is carried out. The fees are set for every pre-transaction and a set up fees is also charged. With a merchant account you would have to pay a monthly support or the equipment rental fees for a point of sale terminal i.e. the machine that is used to swipe the card. The fees are based on two things i.e. the average amount for every transaction and the total amount processed annually.
Before you apply for a merchant account you should assess your business based on the sale track record, your credit record and the type of business that you are doing. The business credit record would give you an idea about the financial status of your business. You should apply for a merchant account only after you get your starting finance. This would accomplish a lot of things. This would show that you have thought of the progress of your business and secondly that you can have customers more than what you would have thought. There are a group of people that use only credit cards to make payments.
With the help of credit cards you can have steps to minimize the time that you would spend in recovering the bad debts. When you take checks people are quite capable of writing a bad check and you would be losing the money. But when you take a credit card through a point of sale terminal then you would be sure that you will be paid within a day or two. The swipe machine would contact the issuing bank to authorize the transaction and would run the account numbers through various fraud protection software’s.
The credit card offers come in varied ranges
The Internet merchant accounts are taken up by businesses for the only purpose of processing the credit card payments. The funds and the payments that are made by the credit card companies would stay in these accounts for a period of less than one day. The money is hereafter transferred into the business account. The credit card processing allows the customers to shop easily and the processing is done automatically and the billed amount is sent to the customer on a monthly basis.
The credit card offers come in varied ranges
The Internet merchant accounts are taken up by businesses for the only purpose of processing the credit card payments. The funds and the payments that are made by the credit card companies would stay in these accounts for a period of less than one day. The money is hereafter transferred into the business account. The credit card processing allows the customers to shop easily and the processing is done automatically and the billed amount is sent to the customer on a monthly basis.
But before a merchant account is set the business owner is required to understand the terms of the account. The first thing that the business owner should realize is how does the credit card processing work The credit card processor would provide an online link between the credit card account of the customer and the online business account of the business owner. The main aim of the processing is to verify whether the information provided is correct. Besides this the other important thing is fund capture where the transaction is made and the amount is deposited in the merchant account.
It is very important for any sort of business today to have their own merchant account for the processing of the credit cards. This is to make sure that the business can receive payments and the customer is providing correct information on the account. Once the business owner decides to establish the business account he or she should understand the terms of the merchant account. It is very important that before deciding on the merchant account the business owner should compare the deal offered from various credit card providers.
A business merchant account is the best way in which you can accept credit cards offered by customers to pay their bills.
