Accept Credit Cards for Online Small Businesses

When you are first starting your online small business it may be a daunting task to try and figure out which services to use to accept small business credit cards. I personally have used three different services to process credit cards; Merchant America, Paypal,and Google Checkout. I will tell you some my experiences with these three online payment processors.

It has been years ago since I have used Merchant America but they do require a Setup Fee and a deposit in a bank of their choosing.The only plus I can see about Merchant America is if you did allot of offline business, you could accept credit cards by phone, or in person. Merchant America gives you a cheesy website shopping cart system to use for setting up an online store ( I found it difficult at the time to figure out how to set it up). I will say that the cheesy free website does rank high on search engines.

The biggest problem I have with services like Merchant America is it requires you to have the ability and knowledge of how to secure your customers credit card information. You have to secure your computer, website, and any hard documents. How well do you trust your own employees?

When I first started out I solely used Paypal. I got burned because paypal put a freeze on my account with over $3000. There was no customer service to contact by phone, I could only contact them by email. Paypal’s customer service email was slower than molasses days turned into weeks into months. My final explanation from them was I was selling lingerie and that was against their terms of service? Paypal was in their infancy, and a competitor reported me. Needless to say at the time there where thousands of people selling lingerie on ebay with paypal. I eventually got my account unfroze. The whole point of me telling you about this experience is to let you know that you need a backup plan, or back up payment processor. I continue to use paypal because of its features.

You can set up a paypal business account for free, and if you need other services like a formal shopping cart or the ability to make sales via phone you upgrade to $20 a month plan. Paypal is international which is a plus. Paypal is like a bank in the since when the customer makes a purchase the money goes to your paypal account.You can then withdraw money from paypal to your bank account – the withdraw process takes up to 3 days. Paypal Merchants can also apply for a debit card that works just like a credit card against your paypal balance, with a 1% cash back reward system. You can also ship easily from your paypal account.

I absolutely love Google checkout. Google checkout is straight forward with the cheapest rates. Money collected via Google Checkout is deposited directly into your bank account. The downfalls with Google is that they are primarily USA based, and do not have any shipping options in their back office.

I touched on it earlier , but I want to clarify something about paypal and Google checkout. They both secure credit card information so you do not have to. Merchants never see the credit card number. You are just notified that you have been paid and they address you should ship the order to.

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