An online credit card processing system is widely used by business across the globe for effortless transactions. It is convenient, secure and most importantly – required. With the businesses world over switching to the internet, not having an online card processing can cost you in terms of revenue. Be it telesales or online businesses, online transactions make the prime method of collecting revenue.
Online Credit Card Processing: Things you must know!
An online credit card processing system is widely used by business across the globe for effortless transactions. It is convenient, secure and most importantly – required. With the businesses world over switching to the internet, not having an online card processing can cost you in terms of revenue. Be it telesales or online businesses, online transactions make the prime method of collecting revenue. But how to go about it?
Before you set up your payment system, you need to understand how it works. Simply put, you would need two things to get started:
A Payment gateway, simply put is a sentinel that checks the information and authorises the transaction. When a credit card is shared (swiped or details uploaded), the payment gateway service provider would send the transaction details to the merchant account which in turn send it to the card-holder’s account for verification. Once that is verified, the payment gateway authorises the transaction and the money is transferred from the customer’s card to your account. A merchant Account is simply an account which would carry on your transactions and then pass on your earnings to you.
Most of the payment gateway providers have their own merchant banking services or have partnered with merchant banking services. Usually you are charged a nominal fee on the number of transactions. This is often executed by a service contract and before you sign one, here are things you must keep in mind:
Check for basic security features of your payment gateway. Ensure that they are in compliance to the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard or PCI DSS.
Check whether or not your gateway service provider has SSL (Secure Socket Layer) feature. (Most of them do). This ensured further security of the transactions.
Can provide you with complete service package which includes shopping carts, email receipts, supports, etc.
The rate of interest/ percentage charge of your merchant banker. For this, it is important to note that high risk merchant accounts often attract a higher rate of interest. If your business falls under a “high risk” category, you might have to pay more than the normal fee charged.
Apart from these above features, what you must also check is the reliability of the service providers. It would do you well to check their customer support and technical support services. Note that these basic checks are often missed while choosing a provider as people are focussed on minimizing costs. More so is the case when high risk merchant accounts are involved. But if your provider’s technical service is lax or technical support is not readily available, your customer’s might face lags in the online credit card processing, which in turn might lead to loss in business. So think well, reach out for comprehensive solutions.
