Comparing Merchant Accounts - A Quick Way To Compare Merchant Card Processing Accounts

Being able to take credit cards is very important to any business that wants to successfully sell goods and services on the Net. At the dawn of online business it was thought that accepting plastic was not a good idea, because it was forcing a real world solution to the Web. Startup companies tried to offer "micro payment" currencies eg "flooz", but the web-based currencies didn't flourish. And so, approximately 10 years on from the people starting to sell on the web, still using credit card to make online purchases and accepting credit cards when trying to sell goods online is still hugely important.

Basically, there are two different ways to accept credit cards online. Let's compare merchant accounts. Businesses can either go for a full merchant account, which allows the business to process credit cards directly, or the business can sign up with a third party payment service, who processed the credit card charges for the merchant. Obtaining a full merchant account has higher upfront costs, but has smaller per item costs. Using the services of a third party payment service costs less initially, but has higher per sale charges.

Making the decision as to whether or not to go for a full merchant card processing account or use a third party payment service is just a question of running the numbers. Consider these different business types and compare merchant account benefits...

In the main, established businesses who are actively trading offline and want to start selling on the Internet will most likely be suited to obtaining a merchant account. Most likely, It's most likely that they will already have an offline merchant account and will expand the remit of that account to add the ability to do "MOTO", which is "Mail Order Telephone Order" credit card orders and only means that the credit card holder isn't there at the time of purchase.

For one-person businesses starting to sell products online, it is important that they consider testing their sales using a third-party service provider. The advantage to the new business is that there's very little upfront cost which means they can test their market cheaply and easily. If sales boom, they can eventually look to decrease the per-transaction costs by applying for their own credit card processing account. If the market isn't profitable, they can at least leave the marketplace without having spent a lot of cash to get their own merchant card processing account.