Accepting credit cards online

Business credit card processing is important for those who sell products and need to be able to collect payment from their customers, and don’t have the possibility of collecting it in cash. When a business sells a product online, credit cards is the only practical payment form. How to accept credit cards online?

There are 3 clear-cut options to accepting credit cards online, and each has their pros and cons

Merchant accounts + payment gateway
A merchant account is a special bank account that allows a company to accept payment by credit cards and have the money deposited to the account. The payment gateway is used to either insert the credit card number by hand, and functions like a physical Point of Sale terminal, or is fed the number by a shopping cart through it’s API (application programming interface).

Third party credit card processors
Accepting credit cards online through a third-party processor is a step down from the merchant account method, but gives you almost all the same benefits. The third part processor lets you use their payment gateway and merchant account, some even help with a shopping cart.

PayPal-type service
With a service like PayPal the process is similar to the above. However, when the customer normally would enter their credit card information they are instead sent to a PayPal web page where they enter their e-mail address and confirm the order after logging in.