With the rising competition among businesses all over the world, one must try out all means to become successful. If you are thinking of starting your own business, or are already the proud owner of a business, then here are few benefits of using credit cards for your business.

Maintain your personal finances and business finances separately.
Using a credit card that is specific only for your business expenses and purchases eliminates the problem of labeling every transaction in your personal checkbook or on your personal credit card statements at the end of the month.

You can build good credit in the name of your business. If you obtain a business credit card, you can use it often and make on-time payments. Hence you can strongly build the credit score of your business. After building a good credit history, later you can also obtain small business loans or other sources of financing if required.

You can avail free offers. Credit cards come with various rewards programs. If you choose one that works for your business, you can easily earn the things you usually buy for free. Sometimes credit cards offer you a way to earn office supplies at a discounted rate. If you go on business travels regularly, then it would make sense that you get a card with travel rewards, either to earn miles towards free flights, or get discounts on hotel rooms.

Easy record keeping. Owning a small business means you are allowed to deduct certain purchases on your taxes, but only if you have maintained good records to prove that you have made those payments.

Additional credit cards for employees. As your business grows, you may want to allow key employees within the organization the ability to make purchases or pay for business expenses on your behalf. Most credit card companies will allow you to obtain additional cards in other names. Your transaction listings and statements will show which credit card made each purchase, so that you can check whether the employee use of credit is being abused or not.

Additional services. Depending on the credit card you choose, you can enjoy many additional services like reservation assistance, verification of flights, and even a personal shopping service.

Travel benefits.
Along with saving good amount of money on travel costs with a credit card rewards program, most credit cards offer travel accident insurance that will cover for things like lost luggage or flight cancellations.

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When we talk about credit card security, PCI Compliance, etc, we must not forget to discuss about the security of your customer’s user names and passwords. It is important to look into how they are being stored. For instance, a great number of shopping carts save these details in simple text format. This makes the critical information so very vulnerable to theft. In such a scenario, if a server is compromised, your users’ information might be readily available for the hackers.

Most shopping carts will store the information in a database like Microsoft Access, mysql, or MSSQL. You should be able to view the databases somehow, either though, Microsoft Access, or Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Desktop Engine or something similar. The web hosting provider that you choose determines how you are going to access this information. Other than the methods and mediums already mentioned, some providers may allow you to access the information via an Open Database Connectivity (ODBC).

Whenever you check your records, do pay heed to the table that stores your user’s information, especially the password table. Make sure that the passwords are encrypted If they are not, then it’s time for you to seriously consider acquiring another shopping cart, Also, you can first try getting in touch with your current vendor to see if he can offer any assistance with enabling a secure passwords feature.
A lot of consumers use the same password for everything. While this is a great risk to them, it is the quickest way for consumers to get to their information. This is the reason you want to protect them as much as possible.

Your Shopping Cart Password

To begin with, you must immediately change your administrator password when you begin adding items that you want to buy. Your password should contain letters, numbers and maybe a couple of extra characters like %, !, *, {, etc. The harder it is for you to remember, the better.

By changing your password from the vendor-supplied password, you have already met one of the requirements for PCI DSS.

Password Strength and Security

When new customers are signing up, your website should recommend that they punch i a unique password, and why they should do so. Also, with any other details the customer has to provide, they must be explained why your company is asking for this information. You may add a tool to check the password strength as well.

Furthermore, when are creating an account account, It must be ensured that their session takes place in a secure environment. This way their user name and password will be protected.

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PCI Compliance is critical in terms of protecting consumers from identity theft. It works towards the development, enhancement, storage, dissemination and implementation of security standards for account data protection. It enhances payment account data security.

Recently, there has been a lot of news about several processors making it mandatory for their customers to be PCI complaint. Those that are not are forced to install a software that shall turn their business complaint or continue to pay a sum of $19.95 per month. Claiming to provide their customers a permanent solution, these processors are offering a software, that needs to be installed and run to make the business PCI compliant. Please do not fall for this money-making ploy. There is nothing that you can just put on your computer that will make your business PCI compliant.

Any aware merchant should be able to see through this farce. How can any software render your business PCI compliant? The best way to avoid getting fooled in such a manner to is to educate yourself about how you can become PCI-complaint.

Following are the steps, which are perhaps the only recourse to becoming PCI compliant, and not some single piece of software:

• Determine whether you need to be PCI compliant. If you accept credit cards, or play any part in the processing of a credit card, you need to be PCI compliant.
• Determine which level of compliance is required for your business.

Level 1: Greater than 6 million credit card transactions per year or any business that has suffered a hack or data breach, or any business deemed Level 1 by card associations.
Level 2: 1 to 6 Million credit card transactions per year.
Level 3: 20K to 1 Million credit card transactions per year.
Level 4: Less than 20K e-commerce, or 1 Million total transactions per year.

• Fill out the self assessment questionnaire (SAQ).
• Fix every area that you answered ‘NO’ to on the SAQ.
• Hire an approved scanning vendor (ASV) to perform quarterly scans of any external networks. - All Levels
• Fix and maintain any failed area of the scan.
• Level 1 Only: Complete an annual on-site audit by a Qualified Security Assessor (QSA).
• Continue to maintain security of networks and card information!

If you fare well on all the above requirements then you have nothing to worry about. All you need to do is continue to maintain a secure network and business environment. This is critically important, else a breach can result in a business requiring Level 1 compliance, which means a cost that may reach into 6 and 7 figures per year.

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If you want to sell your own products online, you will need to choose a means for your customers to pay you. Otherwise, you will not stay in business for long time. It is quite critical to find a reliable, secure, and flexible payment processing solution for your business. So its important to take the time to investigate and assess the options available to you.

A payment processing solution should include the following -

Should be able to accept and process a variety of payment types, including credit cards and electronic checks in a reliable and cost-effective way. With this, the lost sales are reduced and also enhances the quality of your site by allowing your customers the freedom and flexibility to pay you quickly and conveniently.

Provide real-time credit card authorization results which allow you to accept or reject orders immediately, thus reducing the risk of fraudulent transactions.

The processing solution must easily track and manage payment operations more efficiently from multiple payment types, so that you can spend more time on your business rather than managing transactions. It should act as a virtual terminal to allow for processing offline transactions. Hence you will have the flexibility to process orders received via phone, fax, email, or in person.

It should always store transaction records so that you can easily search for transactions and create transaction reports. Provide recurring billing payment services. Recurring billing is an essential feature that offers additional convenience for both the merchant and the customer.

Ability to work with all the major online merchant accounts, so that you can be flexible to switch your banking relationship and need not worry about new software installations. The company should be reliable and well-established. This ensures that your provider will continue to provide reliable payment services as well as new features in future also.

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With the meteoric growth of credit card processing, it is also important that merchant account lenders also provide merchants with new technology credit card processing softwares. It is very beneficial for customers to use such softwares that offer a cost-effective solution to their ecommerce business.

With credit card processing softwares, merchants can now use their personal computers to process major credit card transactions and deposit payments to their accounts.

Some advantages of using these softwares are -

Cost Effective – Credit card processing software save both time and also money.
Better Performance – These softwares include great features which contribute to better performance.
Transaction Details – They generate detailed transaction reports that usually terminals fail to provide.
Improved Software – As they can be upgraded time and again the credit card processing software do not become outdated.

Credit card processing software packages offer easy to use features. Most of the softwares nowadays also provide a lifetime technical support. From credit card payments to checking transactions, these credit card softwares offer secure ways to handle transactions on your computer.

With credit card processing, software merchants can easily import files and get automatic upgrades for free. Credit card softwares are now user friendly which makes them a perfect choice for small business merchants as well. For some of these softwares, merchants don’t even require an internet connection for transactions, as they can be handled via phone line and modem.

The credit card processing software costs may vary from company to company. When buying a credit card software make sure you have gone through all their terms and conditions or you may end up paying thousands of dollars.

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The current downward slope of the American economy is not a secret. It is fraught with an astronomical number of foreclosures, escalating real credit card debt, ever-increasing consumer pricing, lagging personal income, rising unemployment or underemployment rates.

This unsettling news has in no way slowed down the blazing spree of entrepreneurs. Thousands of merchants across America continue to blaze though the openings of new businesses, and more. Opening a new business means the necessity to accept credit cards, and consequently, the need to establish merchant accounts. Moreover, it is in times of financial crunch that more and more people turn to using credit cards for shopping, in order to distribute their expenditure over the coming months.

Here are some criteria to consider when weighing options for acquiring credit card processing capability via the best merchant account:

1) Associated credit card fees – For business profit to be maximized, this is an obvious consideration. Study all rates, particularly the discount percentage assessed to qualified, mid-qualified, and non-qualified transactions. Of course, other fees come into play, such as start up, monthly, and annual costs.

2) Monthly minimum expense – Many credit card companies charge a monthly minimum, which is a fixed amount that the processor charges the merchant with, regardless of how much the merchant makes. For example, if the monthly minimum is $25 and the merchant has only attained a processing amount of $15 (calculated by taking the discount rate times the associated transaction dollar amount), the merchant would be responsible for an additional $10 that month. No business would want to be compounded with unnecessary credit card processing expenses this year.

3) Cancellation or Termination fee – This is just a fee introduced by some processors to make up for the costs incurred. This fee can run into hundreds or even surpass the $1,000 threshold. Businesses fold with greater frequency in a depressed economy, or if the business thrives, you may just want to switch your merchant service provider. In such cases, a cancellation / termination will only serve as a financial albatross to the merchant.

4) Chargeback expense, policies, and procedures – With the growing financial crunch, the likelihood of more customers initiating chargebacks increases. Business owners should know the merchant account provider’s chargeback policies and procedures. Find out whether your merchant account provider will help you navigate through the process of tackling a chargeback if the need arises. It is important to make sure that in case of a chargeback your service provider does not go ahead and freeze your account.

5) Customer support – To learn the facets of credit card processing, merchants must have the service providers customer support explain the ins and outs of credit card processing. That i sbecause, in difficult economic times, merchants cannot afford to waste time on trying to figure out or solve problems stemming from their merchant account. There must be a quick resolution so merchants can concentrate on their core competency.

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Are you thinking of getting a merchant account designed and created for you? Here is the deal. A designer is perhaps not best equipped to help create your online merchant account. That is because a merchant account creator or provider must be one who has a firm grasp of how a merchant account works, and what features are best for your line of business. A designer would not have that knowledge and would only be concerned with the designing part.

Additionally, in case the web designers are hooked up to a certain online merchant account’s affiliate program, which is often the case, regardless of how expensive or inadequate the online merchant program is, they will use that online merchant account for your business without looking at what is best for your business! If the web designers have an alliance with reputable and affordable merchant account providers, it would be all right, else you’ll be stranded with an inadequate merchant account that does not fulfill your business needs.

When You’re getting your website designed, you may be propositioned by web designers with a value added package that includes assistance with establishing an online merchant account once the website is all set and ready, also offering to integrate a shopping cart system into your website. This is because of tie-ups they may have with a certain merchant account provider. This is when a merchant needs to step in, put his foot down and ask ” Is this the best online merchant account there is? Is this is the best deal?”

Ideally, web designers should be aware and knowledgeable when it comes to shopping carts, because it is they who integrate the cart into your website. Hence, web designers should be able to play a pivotal role in helping you find the right Internet merchant account and then implementing the shopping cart system into your website. So, find out whether or not your designer is even aware that the shopping cart and payment gateway must be compatible in order to successfully process credit cards. When you do that, you’ll be surprised how little web designers know about online merchant accounts. On the contrary, they should spend more time understanding the inner workings of the merchant account field and know how or why one provider is better than the other in terms of security and cost, at the very least.

What could be more convenient than your web designer recommending a low-priced, ethical online merchant account provider? A joint decision-making process, between customer and designer, is synergistic and allows for an important exchange of ideas. Merchant account-savvy web designers may prove extremely helpful to business owners, particularly new merchants who may need support and direction understanding the more complicated facets of the merchant account field.

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If you buy off the Internet regularly, you would be quite familiar with websites providing an option, where you could call on a toll free number and just place your order. What an incredibly simple method of buying! By offering this payment alternative, merchants benefit by increased number of sales, as more and more people want to use the convenient way of shopping where all they have to do is dial and provide all the information they need over the phone.

Surprisingly and unfortunately, in spite of the rising popularity of this method of shopping, several merchants are still unaware, and by and large ignorant of exactly where to start and how to go about accepting credit card payments over the phone.

What you need is called a virtual terminal. Using a virtual terminal, a merchant makes for manual processing of credit card transactions, while the customer provides all the relevant details over the phone. Orders are also processed the same way in case orders are received via letter or fax with a computer and the Internet. This works especially great in case of recurring orders. Moreover, to process a transaction, the merchant does not necessarily have to use his computer at the store, rather any computer with a secure Internet connection can be used to log onto a website, login to a secure server with the username and password and start processing payments.

Here is an example. A merchant mails you his online brochure, and you find a particular piece of jewelry very appealing. You fill out the purchase form made available in the brochure and send it back to the merchant. The merchant will use the credit card details provided by you in the online form to process your payment and then send you the product of your choice. This does not require the card to be physically swiped across a credit card terminal. In fact, all the information, such as name of the customer, the amount of the sale, the credit card number, the billing address, etc, is entered in specific fields, and clicking on submit bills the credit card.

A virtual terminal offers more functionality than just accepting credit cards. Use your virtual terminal to authorize payments and charges, perform refunds, possibly void transactions, and bill your customers for recurring or monthly payments. A good virtual terminal may also allow you to check the status of transactions that transpire online or offline, capture previous transactions, cancel authorizations and also allow you to print out reports of all the past transactions you’ve performed.

Before getting a virtual terminal, consider the following:
You need to obtain one from a reputable service provider who’s been in the game for some time;
This provider cannot compromise the safety and security of the information that they are privy to.
The process and layout of the website where you log into should not be cluttered or complicated.

A virtual terminal saves money for merchants as no additional hardware or extra phone line is required. All you need to have access to the Internet, without even having to install any special software – the software and technical information are all on the virtual terminal service provider’s server.

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Any merchant account service website that you visit is bound to make claims to be the best, to give you an iron-clad guarantee and protection from fraud, refunds, and more problems associated with credit card processing. The best you can do is be wary of these fake promises; they are mere words prepared by a skillful copy writer, and the company probably has no intention to live up to any of the great-sounding promises. Careless customers will happily take the bait. Instead, your aim should be to look for a trustworthy and experienced source in the online merchant account industry whose advertisements are backed by years of experience, credible certifications, a portfolio of services provided, list of happy clients, testimonials, reasonable fee structure, and excellent products and services.

You don’t have to be a genius to spot a shamming website. Lookout for websites that use high-flown language, big loud words, and absurd claims. An appropriate example would be any merchant account service that first off promises to provide the cheapest merchant service on the Internet, and then follows that up with a cash reward in case you can come up with an online merchant service provider who offers a lower price. Here is the catch: after signing a binding contract with such a company, even if you do come across a cheaper service, there is no way you can switch over without having to pay a termination fee, which will definitely be a huge amount Furthermore, their cash reward is nothing more than a refund!

This is not the end of using verbiage to deceive innocent and unknowing merchants. These sham providers attract clients by claims of no set-up fee. While a few well-established names in the credit card processing industry have built their reputation on genuine promises, most small scale providers make up for “no set-up fees” by including fees such as “gateway fee,” “real time fee” or “virtual terminal fee, making the cost equivalent to a set-up or start-up fee. It is your responsibility to review the fees, and ask questions if you do not understand why you have to pay a separate “virtual terminal fee”. Also, a comparison with the fee structure of a few other service providers will help you in coming to a rational decision.

No service can be completely free of charge. Businesses that make such a promise have a nasty surprise in store for you. It will pounce out at you when you least expect. That is why it is so important to study every word of the contract before you sign on the dotted line. A thorough reading is sure to reveal another exorbitant fee, perhaps an annual fee, that not only makes up for, but by far dwarfs the waived off initial set-up fees.

There is no end to gimmicks employed by some merchant account providers. While 24 hour approvals and 95% approvals are definitely possible, a claim of 99.99% of all applications being approved is absurd. Complete 100% acceptance rate means that the service provider is approving applications from all merchants regardless of their credit rating, something highly unlikely. Truth is that a small percentage of business owners, due to the nature of their business, or due to their credit history, just fail to satisfy the criterion.

Moreover, even if we assume that a company is actually accepting all the applications it receives, it simply means that they are assuming a lot of risks! Who wants to put their money into the hands of someone like that? Such a company would anyway go under pretty soon. Hence, the reiteration of going for a well-established credit card service provider who actually lives up to their claims and actually charges no application fees, no annual fees, no programming fees. Moreover, if there is no contract term in the first place, there arises no question of a cancellation fee.

Don’t judge a service by words, rather by analyzing their business in every possible way. One way to do that is to get in touch with their customer service people. Make sure that they do serve 24/7 as they promise to do. Have a word with the technical support staff as well. An efficient support staff reflects greatly on the quality of service you are likely to receive. If you are comfortable about the company policies, and the full spectrum of associated credit card processing fees, you may open an account and start processing credit cards for your business.

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When you are starting up a business, there are too many things that need to be taken care of, all at once. With all kinds of paperwork to fill out and other decisions to be made, if you also have to worry about how to get your sales money, it’s much more than hard work you’re doing. Make things easy for yourself and the path to success smooth for your business, by choosing the right merchant account.

First of all, where do you begin? To start out, it is important to understand why credit card processing is right for you. The following two considerations will help you understand why.

In the final two months of 2007 Americans spent close to $30 billion online, with a vast majority of those purchases made using credit cards.
There was also a small but important shift in consumer buying patterns - that being people started to use online stores for more everyday purchases.

If you had any doubts about getting a merchant account, they should all be taken care of by now, and it’s time to take your next step, which is to sift through all the choices available, to find the right merchant account provider for your business. When you do that, keep in mind to.

Go with an established provider, who has established a good reputation over time. Such companies are quick with their approval, do not charge junk fees, and have a broad customer base. All you have to do is fill out an online application, and in lesser time than it takes to open a checking account, you’ll have a new merchant account.
Choose a merchant account provider who accepts all the major players - VISA, MasterCard, Discover and American Express.

Take a look at your prospective merchant account providers list of fees, as this is an area that will affect your bottom line. Do not pick a company that is not willing to display or provide their fee table.

Select a service provider that offers free technical support. This adds credibility to the company, indicates that they own their own products and shows that they care about their merchant base.

If you have a mobile business, you can still be part of the wireless revolution, by getting a wireless merchant account. You too can accept credit/debit cards, check conversion and/or guarantee and multiple carrier options that are compatible with a wide range of front-end merchant processors.

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