What It Takes To Take Credit Cards Over The Net

Getting Started

The first step for any Internet merchant intending to do real-time credit card authorization and delayed settlement processing is to get an Internet merchant bank account. This is the account that enables a business to take and clear credit card transactions (the moving of money from the buyer's account to the seller's account) from an online store. We will call this service provider the merchant bank provider.

The second step is choosing a service provider that will link your Internet store to a respected credit card clearing network. For example, Credit Plus, an Internet credit card clearing service incorporated into all commercial order processing services, uses First Data Corporation's FDC network. Now here's the tricky part you actually have to do these two steps together, for your bank will, typically, need to know which Internet clearing service you intend to use. Most applications require you to indicate which gateway software you will be using.

In short, be prepared to contract with two separate companies and pay two separate setup charges and monthly fees if you intend to maintain your own merchant bank account and offer real-time credit card authorization over the Net. If you can't qualify for a merchant bank account of your own, there are many service providers out there that will function in place of a merchant bank account and a few that will function as both the online credit card clearing service and the merchant bank account, such as Credit Plus.

In the next several sections we will try to give some examples and "templates" that can serve as a guideline against which you can evaluate the various service providers out there.