Choosing A Credit Card Processor

You aren't alone. Although there are a number of financial services now offer merchant accounts to homebased, mail order and Internet businesses, finding the right one for your small business is still a difficult task, fraught with many pitfalls, both before and after you get the account.

For starters, many banks won't offer merchant accounts directly to small businesses. Instead, small businesses need to go through third party providers who secure the merchant account, for you Each of these third parties may have different fee structures and somewhat different rules.

To complicate matters, if you are processing orders online, there are several online gateway systems to process credit cards. Whatever shopping cart software you choose has to interface with these gateways. Not all shopping carts work out of the box with all gateways. Thus you need to be sure the shopping cart you plan on using will work with the merchant card you choose.