If your plans involve selling items online, it is a must that you find a method that allows your customers to pay with their credit cards. By doing so, you will be able to benefit from two types of consumers:
Impulse Buyers – After going through your advertisements and website content, these buyers are very enthused about your offerings. If they have the resources to make a purchase immediately, your sale is as good as secured. Unfortunately, if you only accept checks, the extra time it takes to send out the payment could prove to be problematic. It could also cause the consumer to have second thoughts and end up changing their mind about the purchase.
International Customers – Having the ability to make credit card payments is very convenient if your potential customers are located across international waters. This will automatically take care of issues concerning different currencies as well as the time it would normally take to receive a check from the customer. You can end up losing a large number of potential international customers if your store has no way to accept credit card payments.
Popular Alternatives
While it is certainly a plus, you don’t necessarily need a merchant account in order to accept credit card payments from your online store. Below are several services available to help you facilitate credit card payments and cater to a broader range of consumers.
ClickBank.Net
Click Bank has a one-time setup fee of $49.95 and a transaction fee of $1 plus 7.5% of the sale price. This service is only available for merchants who sell products or services via the internet.
WorldPay.com
World Pay gives thousands of businesses the power to accept payments over the internet, phone, snail mail or fax. It supports credit and debit cards, bank transfers and even mobile payments.
Kagi.com
With Kagi, you don’t have to worry about any setup or monthly fees. However, the service does charge up to a maximum of $3.00 per sale and an additional $0.50 for processing fees.
PayPal.com
If you have a Premiere of Business account with PayPal, you will be charged $0.25 for transactions of $15 or less. Transactions above $15 are charged $1.9% plus an additional $0.25 when customers pay by credit card. PayPal is a very secure, efficient and reliable service. The biggest drawback here is your customers must create an account in order to send you any money.
ProPay.com
ProPay is often viewed as a main competitor to PayPal as the service is similar and only caters to U.S. users. This services calls for you to pay a $35 sign up fee but no other monthly charges are required.
RegNow.com
RegNow is designed for software authors looking to sell their products. Using this service will cost you a pretty penny as it deducts 20% from your sale price along with a minimum of $2.00 in commission fees.
As you can see, you don’t have to sign up for a merchant account just to accept credit cards. It is all about what you are willing to pay in transaction and other fees to accomplish it. Be sure to check with these companies to get the most up to date details regarding their services and transaction fees.
November 13th, 2009 at 7:39 pm
Stumbled on your website from Google Search as i was looking to know something about credit cards in details. Read the whole article on your site and i must say that me and my husband loved reading your post. So i thought of sharing a tip to all your users: For the lowest discount rates for transactions at a point of sale location, try to avoid typing in the credit cards numbers manually, but rather swipe the credit card with your terminal. A swiped credit card is typically given a lower discount rate per transaction. We bookmarked your website. Thanks alot – Steffi
November 30th, 2009 at 2:47 am
Between my family we’ve owned more prepaid credit cards over time than I can total, including Bank Freedom, Greendot, etc. But, the last few years we’ve found that this one is the best for are family AccountNow Visa. Why? Because I was cheerful to discover how well-designed and no sweat to use the underappreciated (and widely mocked) AccountNow Visa’s are.
December 1st, 2009 at 7:30 am
Like reading blogs. Makes me think to make my own blog.
December 26th, 2009 at 2:32 am
Great post, I’m thinking about buying my girlfriend some jewellery, any suggestions?
January 13th, 2010 at 2:07 pm
Sure I see your point. But I think that going for a refurbished cell phone is a great choice in the current economic climate.
January 21st, 2010 at 2:51 am
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