Where to start?

[New Merchant]

I came across this site from your ecommerce article. The article was pretty helpful but I'm still confused on where to start.

I'm planning on opening an online store and the thing I'm most concerned about is obviously processing people's payments. I need to make sure everything is secure and I also need to find a good merchant account company. There are so many out there I'm not sure where to look first!

I appreciate any help you could provide.

Ann

[stymiee]

Hi, Ann.

Receiving your customers' information over a secure connection is hugely important and I'm glad it is a priority for you. Not only will most customers simply not do business with an online store that does not offer a secure checkout, but credit card processors will not establish a merchant account for your business unless you have one. Fortunately securing an order form is not too difficult to do.

Your first option is to purchase a SSL certificate. This is what allows your website to have secure pages (it makes the little lock in the browser window). You can purchase one at godaddy.com for as little as $20 per year. Setting it up is usually easily done through your webhosting control panel and most webhosts will even assist you in installing it. You can find out more about this in our article [url=http://www.merchant-account-services.org/article/ecommerce-checklist]The Ecommerce Website Preparedness Checklist[/url]. But if that sounds daunting to you there is another solution. All of the major payment gateway providers offer free secure order pages with their services. This means all you need to do is when you are ready to have your customers checkout, you send them to your payment gateway for payment, and when they are done they come back to your website. You can learn more about this is our article [url=http://www.merchant-account-services.org/article/payment-gateways-reviewed]Six Payment Gateways Reviewed[/url].

As far as chooing a provider goes, you need to shop around. When I tell you that there are literally hundreds of companies vying for your business I'm not exaggerating. The key is to get complete quotes from all of them and then do a side-by-side comparison. The sales agents you speak to will do their best to make themselves look better through a variety of means. But in the end rates and fees are where the differences lies. You should use the tools provided at this website to help you out. I suggest you download a copy of the [url=http://www.merchant-account-services.org/resources/documents/comparison-checklist.pdf]Account Comparison Worksheet[/url] as that will make it easier for you to gather information. Once you have received at least four quotes use the [url=http://www.merchant-account-services.org/resources/calculators/]comparison calculators[/url] this site offers to see which one really is best for you.

Good luck.

[New Merchant]

Thanks for that. That's a very thorough response. When I start looking, should I just google "merchant accounts" or is there a better place to start?

[stymiee]

That is a good place to start. One piece of advice I like to give is that if you find a website without published rates, just skip it. If they aren't confident enough in their rates to make them public, then they can't be all that good to begin with. What can they possibly have to hide?

Also, one common misperception that many merchants have is that a local representative is better then one who is not. This is rarely true. Local sales agents are able to be face-to-face with you when discussing the setup of your merchant account, but once they establish your merchant account there is little, if anything, they can further do to assist you. Your support is provided by your processing bank which definitely is not local (you can't even walk in there anyway if you wanted to).

[New Merchant]

Awesome. Thank you!

[lowermymerchantrate.com]

[quote="New Merchant"]Awesome. Thank you![/quote]
do some research on the company you choose. are they a member of the BBB (actual a member and not just have a logo on the site), can they give you a couple of referrals, will you work with one person and if so who is your point of contact and ask what roll they have it the company? google the company. do you find them in the rip off report? all to often these young kids are running around without an interest in the company they work for and or your business and are in it for the quick sale/dollar.

does the company have you sign a contract?
is their a large cancellation fee?
annual fees?
call the office # and what you get, a person in india or some one in the states that will personally work with you?

just some questions for thought......

[xarch20]

I would say that the first thing that I would do as a business owner is to read on how merchant accounts work. Learn all of the different fees and then definatly shop around for the best rates.

A good place to start your research would b on a site like to one listed below, check it out.

[angelthomos]

One can learn about merchant accounts with the help of Internet. There are thousands of articles available on Internet which helps us to learn about merchant account.
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samual135