E-commerce has come to be accepted as a way of doing business. However, it is still relatively a new technological evolution and this is evident by way online payments are made. Online credit card payments for example, is still exceptionally difficult and beyond the technical expertise of most online merchants. Most of these merchants instead, relay on other online credit card payments options such as hiring an authorized online merchant to act as a go-between. This is clearly understandable when you consider the complexities of handling online credit cards and the level of security that must be maintained at all times.
Ideally, an online transaction is a real-time transaction that is carried out online. This is very different from batch processing where transactions are kept aside so to speak and wait processing later. As you can see, this can result in problems, among which would be authorizing a transaction even when the funds are insufficient or not available. Online credit card payments thus offer a more superior way of conducting business since it offers a less error-prone system in addition to no wasted time and expense in the process.
Unfortunately service providers and third-party processing come at a fee and in some cases, it can bite off your pocket if you plan to employ some of them. On the other hand, if you are planning to conduct business purely online, you may have little choice but to pay up. About 90% of the entire market today relies on service providers for online credit card payments processing. They have the necessary application servers running the processing engines. They will usually charge a monthly service charge in addition to a per transaction fee. This transaction excludes the per merchant account per transaction fee as well.
The other alternative to service providers is going for a merchant account. With this type of an account, a merchant is able to get the sales proceeds immediately from the merchant account bank within a few days. Generally, the merchant bank will charge a fee in the range of 2.5%. Another alternative for those who expect a few sales per month is to use a payment buyer. Paypal is one example of a company offering such a service. For a serious company that wants to sell their products and services online though, there are other better alternatives available. All in all, to get a real-time online credit card payments processing service with secure hosting and a merchant accounts a service provider would be the best option.
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