Ensuring the best credit card processing for small business and card acceptance is a crucial component of starting a small businessin The United States of America. To get card transactions facilitated, your business will surely need a merchant account, which is simply a payment processing company or bank which specializes in such transactions.
The costs of using any merchant account depends on many varying factors, such as the number of your daily transactions, the kind of device used in obtaining credit card data (a PC over the internet or a swipe on a machine in your store), the kind of product or service you are offering, and the country your business is operating in.
The more risk that is involved in your account, the more you can expect to pay. For instance, an account used by a brick-and-mortar POS swipe system in some grocery store will surely cost significantly less than one used by an offshore adult website. This article lists the three key types of merchant accounts.
Retail
This kind of account is utilized for companies and businesses which feature a physical presence; for instance, a restaurant or barber’s shop. They need a physical device, which is called a POS (point of sale) system, which would be used in swiping customers’ cards to obtain their credit information. In general, providers of retail merchant accounts stipulate that most transactions should be done through a POS machine. Some of these providers offer the best credit card processing in the industry.
Mail order telephone order (MOTO)
MOTO merchant accounts are targeted to merchants who receive credit card payments via mail or over the telephone. Consequently, these kinds of accounts don’t even need you to have any special POS equipment to be used in swiping customers’ credit cards. One other key feature of MOTO merchant accounts is that they charge their users a significantly higher discount rate. Discount rates are the charges that the company or bank that issued a buyer’s card takes from any purchase transaction. The rates differ according to the card-issuing bank or company, the kind of product or service that was purchased, the business or company the cardholder buys from, and so on.
Internet
Internet merchant accounts are the newest type among the three listed merchant account types. Their popularity is progressively rising, and progressively more features are being brought into them, as a result of the progressively rising number of internet users. With the internet’s ubiquitous presence, this category of merchant accounts isa necessity for any company, establishment, or even individual, who do their business online. Internet merchant accounts need a shopping cart application or payment service gateway to be able to deal with credit card information. But, most internet merchant account service providers include the provision of this component to make their offering a bundle or package.
When it comes to credit card processing for small business, retail, MOTO, as well as the internet are the three major types of merchant account services you will find. One thing you have to be aware of is that; you might discover that your business needs more than a single type. So, use this article as a guide.
