Credit Card Processing Blog

A quick search for a merchant account reveals plenty of merchant account providers, each offering a different merchant account package and most guaranteeing to be the ‘cheapest one around’… Well, they can’t all be right!

Most merchant account seekers get ‘temporary blind’ and concentrate on the ‘lowest discount rate’ figure presented by most of the providers. This rate will almost always reflect a transaction in which a signature debit card is physically swiped. Will this apply to most of your transactions? Probably not… Therefore, you must get the provider’s mid qualified and non qualified rates. For the average online merchant, processing cost is somewhere between those two rates.

Your merchant account providers are here to make money. Discount rates are not the only fees charged… Are you familiar with the fee structure? Will you be charged for: customer support, monthly statements, annual renewal fee, gateway fees, batch fees, and if and when you’re not happy with the package – termination fees? Ask for a sample monthly statement and go over the different line items to understand the fee structure.

OK – you checked all fees and everything sounds reasonable. Do you know how much you will be charged for the credit card terminal? While many providers use free terminal packages to well hide other fees, some do it the other way around…

Who is it that you are doing business with? Get to know your provider. Search the provider’s business name on Google and read what other merchants have to say, ask the provider for referrals and call them. Call the acquiring bank the provider is using and ask for a reference on the provider or reseller offering you the account.

What will be the customer service and technical support you will receive? Can’t say? Check it out – call the provider’s customer support line and get a first impression: how long were you on hold, what did you have to go through to get to a real person and was the representative friendly, knowledgeable & helpful.

Are you going for a direct merchant account or a third party processing solution? Though that’s a big enough issue for a standalone post, regardless of the direction you take, you must verify that your business name appears on your customers’ statements. If you’re using a third party solution, make sure they have a ‘soft descriptor’ that will add your business name to any transaction processed on your behalf. If you fail to do that, you are one step from high chargeback rates, and that, my friend, is the end…

Gidi Argov, Founder and CEO
www.CreditCardProcessing-r-us.com

Tags: Credit Card Processing, Credit Card Processing Fees, Merchant Account

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 24th, 2009 at 2:58 pm and is filed under Credit Card Processing, Domestic Merchant Account, Online Payment Gateway, Online Virtual Terminal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.