Shifting your startup into high gear by offering direct online transactions can help you realize revenue and growth goals. Before you jump ahead and start selling online, you’ll need to consider the security, business and organizational attributes of merchant credit card processors. While technology for processing credit cards online has advanced rapidly in recent years, you’ll need to work with a reputable merchant processor to limit fraud, increase security and make it easier for your customers to buy online with confidence. Even if your startup is beginning with a promotional model, looking at merchant services for future transactions can help you better understand the evolution of your business model over time.
Selecting and Setting up Credit processing for your Startup
To start, it’s important to understand how merchant services fit into your overall conversion process. A merchant provider helps process credit cards by establishing an intermediate account which also has filters against fraud. In order to process credit cards, you need a processor for the card, a gateway which verifies the payment as well as a merchant account where the funds are deposited. A high quality merchant provider can offer you both a gateway and an account complete with security protections. There are a wide variety of merchant service provides, and you should work with the most reputable ones including Authorize.net, Paypal, Google or a provider linked to a major institution such as your bank.
Your vendor will essentially be your partner in processing, implementation and security for transactions on your site. Therefore, it’s important to ensure you select a quality company that offers support for their products. You can compare reputable providers in terms of the fixed and variable fees they charge on transactions, the contract requirements, as well as the protections they offer on purchases. A high quality provider will have fraud filters, instant access to funds as well as a flexible contract with low processing fees, so you can keep and protect more of your revenue. For example, if you’re selling an investor newsletter online through your startup, you’ll want to accept all major credit cards and to be able to charge a subscription for recurring revenue. Identifying a merchant provider can help ensure the process is setup properly.
One you select a provider, you can often integrate the solution into an existing e-Commerce cart. Popular online carts such as Magento feature automated integration, so you only have to enter a basic set of account details as well as ensuring you have your SSL certificate (the secure socket layer that encrypts sensitive data transfer) setup on your site. If you have a custom shopping cart, check with the card processor to determine how you can use their API (application protocol interface, which connects your site with their backend) to process transactions. Most startups will want to use a checkout solution that has automated processing to make the process easier. Maintain good contact with your selected merchant representative, who can help you with documentation, support and new features that might save your business money in the long run.
