Every ecommerce website should have an ecommerce merchant account which allows customers to pay for the products in real time. This page summarizes main guidelines for start-up companies when choosing this or that ecommerce merchant account.
Definitions:
Merchant Account. This is the license, the agreement, between you and the credit card company responsible for credit card processing through your website.
Payment Gateway. This is the mechanism that sends credit card information from your merchant account to the bank for it to process the charges.
SSL (Secured Sockets Layer). This is the protocol that enables encrypted, authenticated communications across the Internet. SSL guarantees a secure, non-fraud shopping for the customers on your ecommerce web site.
For a successful ecommerce credit card processing, you will need both, the merchant account and the payment gateway.
Merchant Account Providers.
There are dozens of merchant account providers online. The list below highlights only the quality merchant account providers with which many online sellers are satisfied.
| Services |
Charge.com |
Merchant
Account Express |
2CheckOut.com |
VeriSign.com |
Application
Fee |
FREE |
FREE |
FREE |
FREE |
| Setup Fee |
FREE |
FREE |
$49.00 |
$179.00 and up |
Transaction
Fee |
25 cents per transaction |
20 cents per transaction |
5.5% commission on each
transaction,
plus a $0.45 charge per
transaction |
10 cents per transaction and up |
| Gateway Fee(Monthly)
|
$29.95 per month |
$14.95 per month |
FREE |
$19.95 and up |
Statement
Fee
(monthly) |
$10.00 per
month |
$9.95 per month |
FREE |
FREE |
