Internet Merchant Account

The demand for credit card merchant accounts has grown steadily, paralleling the growth of Internet-based businesses. In today’s climate of high unemployment and layoffs, more people than ever before are turning to thoughts of Internet entrepreneurship.

What is a Merchant Account?

A merchant account is what allows you to accept credit cards as a form of payment from your customers. Your payment processor accepts payments on your behalf and deposits those amounts, less any applicable processing fees, to a bank account you designate, usually within a day.

Merchant accounts are important whether you sell on the Internet or not, but are especially crucial for Internet merchants. After all, Internet buyers cant hand you cash! They only way they have to pay is by electronic means. Therefore its imperative that you have an Internet merchant account so you can accept the payments of all your website visitors who are clamoring for your products!

Whats Different about an Internet Merchant Account?

When making a purchase on the Internet the physical card isn’t present. The card cant be swiped, and some of the security checks a brick-and-mortar merchant can perform, such as checking the signature or picture included on some cards, are unavailable to the Internet merchant. Therefore there is conceivably more fraud on Internet credit transactions than card-present transactions.

If you’re doing any kind of card-not-present selling, including Internet, telephone or catalog sales, you’ll need a merchant account specially adapted to these types of sales. Most credit card companies will have a different way of evaluating the risk and a different fee structure for card-not-present sales.

With an Internet merchant account you have a couple options on how to process your transactions. Commonly you’ll have software that performs all the same transactions through an Internet-based payment gateway that normal POS equipment does in a brick-and-mortar store. Alternatively, if you already have physical POS equipment, you may choose to manually run your Internet transactions through that equipment.