Reviewing the Best Merchant Account Providers

For anyone who has had their own business for any amount of time, they no doubt have heard the phrase: “To make money you have to spend money.”

A more accurate way to express that as it applies to growing your business would be: “To make money you have to invest money back into your business.” This is exactly what any Internet-based business owner is doing when they decide to undertake the expense of adding credit card processing services online.

If you’re a traditional retailer you can find a store in an obscure section of town with dirt-cheap rent. But you probably won’t get a lot of business because people aren’t in the area very often because it’s not a place they feel safe or enjoy spending time in. So that cheap rent payment is actually costing money in terms of decreased sales/profits.

That’s why you’d spend more for rent to be in a great location with lots of consumer traffic and a store people feel comfortable in. It costs more in the short term, but it will help profitability over the long haul.

And it’s not all that different if store just happens to be on the Internet. You still have to invest wisely to make sure your business is attractive to its customers by making their time on your site easy and enjoyable.

This is why it is important to take a look at the investment of adding an online credit card processing service — an examination that probes beyond the bottom-line price. You have to think more about what you may not be getting for the price some companies will charge.

And this might be a good time to make what might be an obvious point, and that is credit card processing companies, just like you as a business owner, are in business to make a profit. As such, you will have some cash outlays to make, but the trick is to make them wisely. And there are fees tied to having merchant services.

For example, the gateway fee (also referred to as an internet processing gateway fee) is going to be charged by all companies. The gateway refers to the payment gateway, which essentially is the secure path by which sensitive cardholder information is sent back and forth during the transaction.

While this is a cornerstone of your processing needs – and you want to make sure your customers can trust using their cards on your site – the established companies will price this around $15-20 per month.

However, there are some companies out there that will charge up to four times that amount! That begs the question – is their gateway is four times better? Four times more secure? A great rule of thumb is that when you see such a disparity in price you need to ask why. And if you don’t get a clear answer, ask again. If you’re still not getting clarity, move on.

Another fee to consider carefully is the monthly minimum, or what you will be charged no matter how many card transactions you process in a single month. If you expect to have a significant volume of transactions every month, seek a plan that has a reasonable fee.

But let’s say you sell genuine Civil War weapons that were crafted in France — the odds are that your transactions every 30 days may be in the single digits. In this case seek a lower fee.

The aim of this exercise is to urge to think about the additional of online credit card services in terms beyond just a bargain-basement price. Price-shopping is a good idea, but not if you aren’t getting all you need from card processing.

However, there some aspects of merchant account services where an e-business person shouldn’t be spending their money. Looking at Charge.com; the company does not have fees – often called “junk fees” – that several of its competitors do. Charge.com doesn’t levy a cost on submitting an application for card processing services, access to technical support, card processing/shopping cart software or set-up services.

At the end of the day the smart e-business person should look at what their business needs from a merchant services perspective, and then find a company that can meet those needs in a cost-effective manner. And without junk fees.