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Bringing your store online means you have to be ready to respond to the online market’s demands, one of which is acceptance of credit card payments. Remember that most people who shop online mainly because they prefer the convenience of not having to leave home or the office just to get some things. If you’re reject their cards, that’s not going to be a very good move. It would be as if you were rejecting their capacity to pay, so if you want to thrive in the highly competitive Internet market, you have to offer an e-commerce functionality on your website. Of course, there is no rule that bans you from going online without accepting credit cards. It is your discretion as the business owner, but in a practical sense, you would always want to put yourself in your customers’ shoes. Think of why they would probably rather buy online than through traditional means. Most probably, there are reasons and whatever these reasons are, it is your responsibility to listen if you want to survive doing business on the web. If you don’t mind the fact that most online shoppers will prefer online payments, then they probably won’t mind what you’ve got to offer them even if they were actually pleased with your goods or services. Think of how much sales you would have closed in a day if you had allowed people to enter their credit card numbers and complete their purchases without having to come down to your store. Probably, that would be a huge amount because if those people viewed your website enough to have wanted to make a purchase, they probably would have wanted to pay through the website as well. In other words, getting a merchant account is a must if you want to thrive as an online businessman. Merely thinking of the process of getting such an account might be taxing by itself, but it actually isn’t that complicated an issue. In fact, there are Internet merchant account providers who can approve applications in an instant once all requirements have been submitted and validated. Some may take longer, perhaps days or months on the average. However, waiting for a merchant account application to be approved is nothing compared to what might be a lifetime of enjoying more sales than if you never accepted plastics for payment. People these days are busier than ever and the convenience that the Internet has brought upon consumers is unmatched. As an online businessman, you wouldn’t want to be the unfavored exception, so it’s always important to adapt to changing tides if only to please your customers. After all, they are the lifeblood of your business and they surely deserve every little form of convenience you can offer. Along with a merchants account, you would also need to hire payment gateway services which will mainly handle the security aspect of online purchases that will be made on your site. When you have these two helping to achieve your business goals, you can only wonder took you so long to have them.

Tags: merchants account, payment gateway
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Threats to Internet users’ safety have been exaggerated proportionately with the growth of this technology. Regrettably, for e-commerce merchants, a good chunk goes to them. The risk of fraud is certainly higher in card-not-present transactions such as online purchases compared to traditional selling where the card is actually verifiable with the customer’s signature. For online businessmen, every credit card purchase is simply of higher potential to turn invalid. On the other hand, the situation is not helpless and there are ways to notice whether or not a credit card used by an online buyer is authentic. The first clear step is to ensure that information provided by the customer is correct and complete, including full address and phone number. In other words, you decrease the chance that a purchase turns out to be illegal when you have more information entered through your website matching what is contained in the card holder’s actual bank records. Of course, it’s not adequate to accept whatever information is given. You also need to verify, for instance, by calling the phone numbers entered by the person on your client interface. If you just can’t reach those numbers, they’re probably fake and so is the customer who claims to be the rightful owner of the account he plans to make a purchase with. If you have an e-commerce merchant services account, the more you need to be conscious about preventing charge backs or having to pay the cost of invalid credit card purchases. Consequently, additional security measures might be essential for particularly doubtful transactions. Ask the customer to fax both sides of the card itself as well as any government ID such as a driver’s license. Or require him to supply you with the Card Security Code which is a set of numbers found only on the credit card itself. Because most credit card theft happens virtually (only information about the account is stolen and not the card itself), knowing that a customer actually has the card increases the likelihood that he is the rightful card holder. Spotting invalid purchases can in fact be easy and may just need common sense. For example, orders to be shipped to an address other than what is indicated in a card holder’s banking records could be against the law. Orders coming from free email services such as Yahoomail, Gmail, etc. are also a red flag considering the high occurrence of fraud using these services. Larger-than-normal purchases, particularly when specified for rush shipment, could mean a thief grabbing the limited chance he has to drain his victim’s account, knowing it will soon be frozen once the theft is reported. Orders made outside the country should also be looked into more closely simply because you will have almost no way of verifying whether or not the supplied address is genuine. However, if you want to spare yourself the trouble of having to verify online purchases, you can hire a payment gateway to do the job. They actually have more knowledge and expertise and you’re probably going to end up with a sale that won’t hurt your business, your href=”http://www.acceptwithubc.com”>Internet merchant account nor your credit score.

Tags: internet merchant account, payment gateway
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