Merchant Credit Card Processing
A merchant account is essentially a bank account designed specifically to accept credit card transactions. For online merchants, it is highly advised that you support credit card payments as these days as most people use their credit cards to buy everything from an insurance policy to dog food online.
If you have an online business or retail store and are thinking of Merchant Credit Card Processing then you need to first look at the various options available. Different processing providers offer different packages that include features like retail-swipe terminal processing, real-time Internet processing, and computer-based processing. Let us take a detailed look at the three types of processing as it will help you to make an informed choice:
Retail Swipe Terminal
This is an ideal type of processing option for businesses that focus on retail sales.
This is definitely not for internet businesses. You will need to use a point of sale software (POS). It comes into play when a customer is making payment through their credit card and you will need to swipe the card at the POS terminal in order to get the necessary transaction data. Retail swipe terminal is considered to be the cheapest credit card processing solution and also has the lowest risk where fraud is concerned.
Real-Time Internet Processing
Real time Internet processing is a type of processing which is ideal for online businesses. How does it work? When an customer is ready to make payment then they click on the checkout link to take them to the payment options page. Here they can choose to pay through their credit card and provide information regarding their credit card like date of expiry, card number etc.
The confirmation for acceptance or decline is received immediately. If the card is accepted then the money will usually be transferred to your merchant account within 2 business days.
Computer-Based Processing
Computer Merchant Credit Card Processing based processing is a type of processing where software is used to enable you to process all the major credit cards as well as check guarantee services on your computer or PC or even laptop. The benefit of computer based processing is that it will greatly reduce fraud losses as a human needs to manually enter in the transaction details.