How to Get a Merchant Account for Accepting Credit Cards?

Credit Card processing is the top requirement of every small and big business today. Hence, to get started with the processing of your credit cards, you’ll need to activate a special type of account – Merchant Account.

A merchant account is a type of account that allows businesses to accept payments by payment cards, particularly debit or credit cards. It is generally established under an agreement between the issuer and a merchant acquiring bank for the settlement of payment card transactions. Small businesses usually seek for their merchant accounts through credit card processing companies, and not from their commercial bank.

So…the steps to get a merchant account are:

1. Evaluating Credit Card Processing Companies – There are myriads of credit card processing companies offering merchant accounts and relevant services. Hence, or businesses, it becomes difficult to choose the best company. Many factors influence your decision including the rate and fees, the extent of services, process complexity and the time it takes from registration to competition. Therefore, evaluate the best companies in the market and choose accordingly.
2. Are you paying too much for Credit Card Processing? – Credit card processing fees is the cost of doing business that is almost unavoidable by most of the companies. Whether it’s about buying products or services, often consumers and businesses prefer paying with a credit card. As a result, credit card purchases may account for 65 to 100% of a company’s sales and thousands of dollars in processing fees each year. As such, it is important to evaluate the payment structure you’d be paying to the payment processing companies.
3. Risky Businesses for Merchant Account Providers – With merchant accounts comes the risk were merchant incur “charge backs” or disputes from their customers. These charge backs are not associated with the charges or credits, instead refer to unhappy customers that initiates a dispute of a charge that has shown up on their statement.