Accept Credit Cards Online Without a Merchant Account

There are two major ways to accept credit cards on your website. The first and most expensive is to have your own merchant account. Not only is this option expensive, it also requires extensive credit checks, lots of paperwork, and usually takes days or weeks before you get approved. Fortunately, there is an alternative.

Third party payment processors who will accept credit card payments on your behalf exist in growing numbers. These third party processors will take a percentage of your sale for their troubles, then pass on the rest to you. Rates vary greatly from one payment provider to another so doing your homework is important in order to get the right fit for you. Some payment providers will accept all kinds of goods and services while others specialize in only digital products, or hard goods, or services.

General Purpose Payment Providers include:

Paypal ? Owned by Ebay, Paypal offers one of the lowest rates of any third party payment processor. At the time of this writing, their standard rates were 2.9% plus $0.30 US per transaction. Paypal offers excellent support and great documentation to get you up and running in no time at all. www.paypal.com

2checkout.com ? Has a $49 US one time setup fee. Their rates at the time of this writing were $0.45 US plus 5.5% transaction fee. Discount rates are middle of the pack, service is very good and through them, you can accept most major credit cards. www.2checkout.com

Digital Information Payment Providers include:

Clickbank ? You pay a one time $49.95 US activation fee. They then pay you the retail price of your product minus $1 and a 7.5% fee. Clickbank also has an easy to use affiliate program so that you can make money when others sell your product. www.clickbank.com

Digibuy ? An electronic commerce solution for publishers of software, shareware, electronic art, information, and data. They charge a rate of 13.9% per transaction with a $3 US minimum order. They provide you with many features including brandable order forms, invoicing and test orders. www.digibuy.com

All but Clickbank give you the ability to have brandable shopping carts. This allows you to customize your order forms so that the customer doesn't feel like they are leaving your site thereby building trust. All of the third party payment processors above provide you with help to get started.

Accepting credit cards online doesn't have to cost you a lot of money. Most times it doesn't even have to include a credit check. Most of these services will even make regular deposits directly into your bank account for ultimate convenience.

When you need to accept credit cards quickly and inexpensively, one of the payment providers mentioned above just might fit the bill.

This article was written by Joe Duchesne, president of http://www.yowling.com/, a web hosting b2b company that offers a free ecommerce shopping cart. Copyright 2004 Yowling. Reprint Freely as long as you provide a clickable link back to my website from this resource box.

More Ecommerce Articles

What is SSL (the little padlock)?
SSL (?Secured Socket Layer?) is a protocol used to encrypt the communication between the user's browser and the web server. When SSL is active, a ?little padlock? appears on the user's browser, usually in the status line at the bottom (at the top for Mac/Safari users.

Online Lead Generation: Can it Work for My Business?
Business-to-business service providers have a wide range of tactics they can deploy to gain new clients or customers. Direct mail; cold calling; TV, radio or print advertising are all ways in which B2B services gain new customers.

6 Steps to Attracting Black Customers Online
by Jamila White, "The E-Commerce Diva"In the rush to keep up with technology, many African-American business owners are so busy trying to add the latest bells and whistles to their Web sites, get to the top of the search engines, and learn the latest database technology that they often forget this simple fact: people do business with other *people*, not computers. Understanding the importance of relationships is key to attracting African-American buyers online.

How To Sell Your Products Online?
E-commerce is gaining pace! Research firm eMarketer predicts that 2003 will see online sales reaching US $58.2 billion excluding travel.

Doing Business Online ? Private B2B Exchanges
Business processes are the building blocks of an enterprise. If one of these processes fails to live up to its expectation, business starts to flounder.

Grow your Business with Emarketplace - Part III
Increase Company ProductivityAfter years of hard work, finally your business started to pick up. You are selling more products then ever! You have lined up a good number of suppliers and buyers.

Grow Your Business Using B2B Emarketplace ? Part II
Selecting the right emarketplaceAlthough, IT spending has been staying flat for the last several years, corporate spending in e-business is gaining significant ground and at present surpasses 20 percent of overall IT budget.This means, more and more businesses are undertaking ecommerce initiatives, and as a result increasing sales, streamlining business processes and dramatically boosting productivity.

Grow Your Business Using B2B Emarketplace - Part I
If you are a small to medium size company and selling or planning to sell products and services over the Net and still did not try out emarketplaces, you are simply loosing a great opportunity!Research firm eMarketer predicts that worldwide B2B ecommerce revenues will surpass US$ 1.4 trillion by the end of 2003.

Retirement Signature Frames ? The Perfect Retirement Gift!
When most people think of a retirement gift, they think of a watch. It?s the tried and true gift that companies give employees to say thanks for all the years of hard work.

The Plain Man?s Guide to Making Money Online
I?m a plain man who uses plain thinking in devising strategies for making money online.I do not spend obscene mounts of money attending high ticket web conferences nor do I rush to purchase the latest collection of web casts at outrageous prices.