How to Host an eCommerce Merchant Account

E-commerce uses merchant processing accounts for credit cards.

There are millions of e-commerce sites on the Web, and the vast majority of them take debit and credit cards or Paypal accounts to automate the purchasing process. Merchant accounts can be obtained in a number of ways, and there are a variety to choose from. Some require a fixed fee per transaction and others take a percentage of the money paid by the consumer. In order to provide an online payment facility it is necessary to host a merchant account either on your hosted website or your business Web server.

Instructions

1. Choose a set of payment methods. Credit and debit card and online payments can be obtained in a variety of ways and for a variety of cards. The most common is to send authorization requests for these types of transactions to merchant processing banks. It will be necessary to consider a number of merchant processing providers to provide certain card facilities or alternative payment methods, such as PayPal.

2. Read the terms and conditions for each merchant provider. In some cases money paid to you will be instant, such as PayPal, but in other cases the money will not reach you for a month or more. There may charges associated with provision of merchant services.

3. Upgrade your website facilities to take payments. Once you have decided which of the merchant processing providers you are going to use, you will need to use any buttons or website code they provide to access their services from your website. Possibly, you will choose more than one provider and therefore links for each button or link will need to be accurately implemented, using HTTPS to encrypt financial transactions.

Tips & Warnings

• It is possible to host your own online payments, rather than choosing a standard provider, but major safety and security upgrades may be needed.

References

• Business Link: Accepting debit and credit cards

Resources

• PayPal Business