Credit Card Processing Merchant Account is becoming necessary. Plastic is America’s payment medium of choice. More and more businesses find themselves at a disadvantage if they cannot accept credit card payments. It is important to understand the basics of what they do for you and how much they cost.

Merchant Account Credit Card Processing and Different Types

Merchant Accountscome in many flavors. Some providers are fully featured and handle all aspects of payment processing, such as Chase’s® Paymentech. Others specialize in mobile merchant services, such as Intuit. Some focus on e-commerce and do not provide physical equipment, while others specialize in retail stores. If you have questions, most companies have an on-call sales team to answer questions. It can seem confusing, but a little upfront research will pay off handsomely with the extra sales for your business.

Merchant Account Processing Benefits

Merchant Account Processing, primary function is to give a business the ability to accept and process credit card payments. These payments are either accepted manually with a card reader, virtually via an electronic payment gateway, or over the telephone with an automated voice response. Typically your Merchant Services will also settle all the funds with different card associations (VISA®, MasterCard®, etc.) on your behalf. In addition to their primary use,Merchant Account Processing offers other services that better allow your business to handle electronic payments. These include the handling of purchase adjustments and charge backs, interacting with a fulfillment company, and giving you real-time reporting of your credit card sales.

Card Processing Merchant Account

Merchant accounts Card Processing are pretty useful but how much do they cost? Merchant account pricing has a few dimensions to it. Mostly best merchant account providers charge some sort of transaction fee, which usually consists of a percentage of the transaction amount and a flat dollar amount. These fees range from 1.6%-5% and $0.10-$1.00 per transaction.The precise amount of these fees is usually determined by a number of variables. The credit history of your business, the credit card processing equipment you will use, and the nature of your business are the most important components of merchant services pricing. Your merchant account will typically have others costs as well. Some charge a flat monthly fee, a start-up fee, fees for settling your terminal (‘batching’) and fees for charge backs. You typically have to pay for the equipment that comes with your merchant account, but many providers will give it away for free as a promotion.