Home Based Jobs Data Entry - Accept Credit Cards on Your Web Site

And heaven forbid you don't have your driver's license on you, write the check out, try to find a pen, versus get the checkbook out, it's a lot easier to just whip out a card and charge it!

Hopefully this article will help you make a more informed decision. What kind of sales volume are you expecting? What do you want to spend? Or a downloadable product, are you shipping tangible product? What is your target audience? There are many factors to consider. As simple as it sounds, unfortunately, it is not. There are many ways you can accept credit cards online.

But there are a lot more things you have to do to ensure the quality of your visitors experience and transaction security, you have complete control over how to accept payments. An example of this would be Authorize.net linked to your business bank account. The other method is a payment gateway linked to a merchant account you hold. And your control over many aspects of the transaction will be limited, the payment engine is on their website. An example of this is PayPal or 2Checkout. One is through a third-party payment processor. There are 2 main ways to accept credit cards on your website. Let's set some definitions, first of all.

Let's examine some of these methods.

Lets compare the pros and cons of a traditional merchant account versus a third-party processor, first.

Etc, american Express, mastercard, typically Are generally direct accounts with Visa, deposit funds within 1 to 3 days. Are better if you wish to accept credit cards offline - face to face or over the phone. Portray professionalism - your name is on the statements. May require some programming to get them to work with your site. As you have to often pass credit checks, can be harder to get. Merchant Accounts: Generally have monthly fees.

Often have built in affiliate marketing programs. Are often geared towards selling downloadable products. Hold your money for up to a month. Such as affiliate programs, often have other features built in. Don't usually allow custom shopping experience - the customer leaves your site to pay. Usually charge a flat per transaction fee plus a percentage of each transaction. Third Party Processors: Often have no monthly fees.

As these are services I use and am quite familiar with, and SaleFlurry, payDotCom, clickbank, 2Checkout, we'll examine a few from the above list: PayPal. And many more, google Checkout, iBill, worldPay, saleFlurry, payDotCom, some other services are Clickbank. I mentioned PayPal and 2Checkout earlier.

PayPal can support both digital and tangible products. They also hold your money until you withdraw it. But they "urge" you to be, you don't HAVE to be. The disadvantages are the fact that PayPal prefers that you be a member to purchase someone's product or service. Widely used and they've been around for a while, no signup fee, advantages of PayPal - easy to use. Or you can just copy and paste a few lines of code into your site to make a "Buy Now" button, there are quite a few shopping cart software packages that can integrate with PayPal. PayPal:
PayPal is a great way to accept payments for digital and tangible goods.

There is also a 49 dollar signup fee. 2Checkout supports both Digital and Tangible products. And I feel they are the closest to having a real merchant account without having one, but they are also pretty easy to use, their fees tend to be the highest. Many shopping carts also integrate with 2Checkout. They deposit money within a few days to your bank account. 2Checkout:
2Checkout is one of my favorites.

There is a signup fee of 49 dollars. They pay by check every 2 weeks. They also have a price cap on products. And you can only have one sales URL per account (although you can have many products on it), they only support digital products. They have a built in affiliate program and a marketplace to sell your product on. Clickbank:
Clickbank is a favorite among internet marketers.

They allow Digital and Tangible products. And then it is a one time 29 dollar fee, unless you want to sell multiple products, there is no signup fee. As payments are deposited into a PayPal account, payDotCom could be considered a front end to PayPal. They are similar in that they have a built in affiliate program and an online marketplace. Created as a competitor to Clickbank, payDotCom:
PayDotCom is a newer processor.

And transaction fees are a flat 1 to 3 dollars per transaction, signup is free. You can accept payments that way, saleFlurry is unique in that if you have a traditional merchant account and an account with the payment gateway Authorize.net. And integrates with PayPal as well, it has an affiliate program. SaleFlurry:
SaleFlurry is a brand new service that just launched in July of 2006.

Hopefully Google will change that soon, but. It only works with Tangible goods, at this time. Plus you get credit towards your AdWords account if you sell product through Google Checkout, signup is free. And it's from Google, google Checkout:
I am mentioning Google Checkout because it is new.

What if you need to accept payments by phone or in person? And then return to yours, you don't want to have to send the buyer to another website to pay, or? What if you want to completely integrate payments on your website, so? I've gone over some of the more popular third party payment processors above.

It's time to look at the traditional Merchant account.

Or an online virtual terminal where you enter the card information into a computer), then set up with a payment gateway to get your terminal set up (either the physical swipe terminal like a TelXon or Verifone unit, you need to talk to your bank about turning your business account into a merchant account. Merchant accounts and payment gateways don't usually come together in a neat package either. It sounds rather confusing, i know. And then money is deposited from the sale to your bank account through the merchant account, such as Authorize.net, the information is communicated to a payment gateway, when the card is swiped. The credit card swipe terminal is the front end. A Merchant account is typically used with brick and mortar businesses.

Charge.com is the best place to start, if a traditional merchant account is your cup of tea, so. They don't charge the signup fees or virtual terminal fees that others charge. But the most helpful was Charge.com, i called quite a few places for information. At the time I had no idea how to integrate it with my website, plus. I was not up to speed on all the monthly costs and what I'd pay up front, when I set up my merchant account.

Shopping Cart Software

And USPS for your shipping needs, uPS, having some sort of Shopping Cart software is advantageous if you are selling a large variety of products and shipping them - most of these packages can also integrate with FedEx, all in all. But heavy customization would most likely require the services of a developer who is familiar with a particular package and could customize the look to suit your needs, there are often plenty of "plug in" templates available to change the basic look and color combinations. And it is often difficult to create a custom design to integrate with your existing site's design, and Authorize.net - making it very flexible.Most Shopping Cart software packages have an "out of the box" design scheme, 2Checkout, can accept payments through PayPal, oSCommerce, one such package. Most software of this nature can accept payments through several sources, first of all. There are pros and cons to using shopping cart software to accept payments. Others can run up to almost a thousand dollars, some are free. There are literally hundreds of different shopping cart software packages on the market.

And how good you are at web development, how many sales you expect, the prices of the products, take into account what you are selling. The decision is yours, ultimately. And I've covered many of them here, there are many ways to accept credit cards on your website.

And I hope that you have gained enough basic knowledge to know what will - and won't - work for your business needs, thanks for reading! That wraps up this overview.