Taking Payments Over The Internet

One of the most important decisions you will have to make regarding a Business web site is how to accept payments. Doing business on the Net means finding a secure, cost-effective, and reliable way to collect payments and process transactions. Generally speaking, the more methods of payment types that you accept the better your chances of making the sale.

Shopping Carts are a necessity for offering the products to the customer, while they can be designed many different ways, below is a standard shopping cart. Shopping carts should have all the information possible to entice a customer to buy.  

Different Ways to Accept Payments

Here is a brief rundown on different types of payment processors available, the range from Free to some having monthly Gateway charges. Be Careful, depending upon your business this decision can cost you thousands every year.

• Pay pal : One of the most successful Payment processors available on the internet. Free to set-up and use. Features  Low Merchant rates, high reliability and is recommended for the small or the beginning merchant.

• Merchant Accounts:  These accounts are offered through banks and credit card processing companies. Usually they may feature high setup fees and/or monthly charges. Some may even require a “Terminal” at your location to accept credit cards. This is a must for a “Brick and Morter” store, but unless you have a very busy internet business it will cost you lots of money.
• E-Commerce Sites:  This is the easiest way to get a web presence. They usually offer a total package that may include a basic web site, shopping carts and appear on the surface as the best way to go. They take care of everything from hosting the site to accepting the credit cards for you.                                                                             Warning:  These sites can cost you thousands and usually give very little (if any) results.
• Other Solutions: Another solution is to use a 3rd party to accept the payment information on a secure server and relay the sale information to you. Utilizing this method would allow you to take payments from different sources. For Example, you might have a conventional merchant account in your store and would like to accept Paypal and also accept payments from Pay-By-Check and E-Gold Payments. Utilizing a third party solution can achieve this. The customer would fill in their information and it would be routed accordingly. If they use the Paypal payment it would bring them to the Paypal shopping cart area, If they choose to pay by credit card the information would be stored on a secure server and you would be notified that you have received a sale. You would then “Log On “ to the third party and retrieve the sale information.

Confused?  Frustrated ?

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