RSS| Merchant Account - Its Definition | |
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A Merchant Account is a bank account in which funds are collected by a bank from credit card purchasers and disbursed to the merchant. Banks consider Merchant Accounts to be a 'loan' and underwrite the issuance of a Merchant Account much like a loan, requiring an application, supporting documentation like tax returns, acceptable products/services and good credit. The bank takes a percentage of each sale as a processing fee. It may also impose a transaction fee for each attempted purchase, even if no sale is completed.
A credit card processor relays a request from the purchaser to the purchaser's bank and upon approval, transfers the funds to the merchant account and confirms the transfer to the purchaser.... |
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| Credit Card Processor | |
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A credit-card processor is an institution separate from and independent of the bank issuing the Merchant Account, or the processor may be a stand-alone institution providing both the Merchant Account and processing services. The processor acts as an intermediary between the purchaser and merchant, receiving the purchase request from the purchaser, verifying funds available in the purchaser's credit-card account, transferring the funds to the merchant's Merchant Account, and confirming the successful transaction to both the purchaser and merchant.
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For it's trouble, the processor assesses a transaction fee (~25¢-50¢) for each attempted purchase, again, even if no sale is completed. (In rare instances, certain processors only assess a fee for a successful sale, but in turn may charge as much as $1 per successful sale.) All processor's transaction fees are in addition to the merchant bank fees. In this fee environment, there's fixed monthly fees like statement fees ($10-$30), gateway fees ($10-$25) and minimum processing fees. There are application fees & licensing fees, set-up, start-up and make-it-up fees. The ultimate 'catch' for many many merchants however will be that they will either be declined a Merchant Account or they will be offered a higher fee because the issuer has classified certain businesses as 'high risk'.
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| Advantages of Merchant Accounts | |
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| K E Y F E A T U R E O F M E R C H A N T A C C O U N T | |
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C O M I S S I O N
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| 1$ + 4% only. Best rate on the net. ! | |
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M I C R O P A Y M E N T A C C E P T E D
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ONLY 69 cents up to $7 item value |
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| R E A L T I M E S A L E S | |
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The merchant process most credit cards in real-time. |
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Some people have Internet access but feel uneasy giving their credit card details online. Instead of giving their credit card they place the order online but complete it by either printing out a form we display and adding their card number and faxing it toll free to us, or else calling one of the toll free phone numbers in 16 countries and advising of their order number and credit card number. |
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C H O I C E
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Choice of USD, EURO or GBP base pricing |
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M U L T I C U R R E N C Y S E L L I N G
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All pages display guideline prices in the currency of choice that the customer selects each time he enters the store. |
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O P T I O N A L S H O P P I N G C A R T
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Free optional shopping cart system for your own website |
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| L I M I T | |
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Per single transaction the limit is $9999.99, and you are monitorized first three months, when the card company will call your customers to confirm every order |
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P A Y O U T
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You get the payments after one month. After 3 months of monitoring, in 15 of each month, you get previous month sales. |
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P A Y M E N T
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The merchant pay you by ACH Direct Deposit, US check, UK BACS (straight into your bank account), UK cheque for ex-pats, Wire transfer and PayPal - you choose! You get paid on or before the 15th of the month following the month of the order (i.e. all August sales paid on or before 15th September). All payments including wire transfers are free of transmission costs (one per month). |
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L O O K & F E E L
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There is a very simple to use menu-driven ordering system but if you require more control the Super Advanced Level (at no extra charge) enables you to keep all ordering and result pages on your own website - the customer need never even visit the merchant website. You collect all the order details and send them to the merchant in a defined manner to process them automatically and instantly. Great for Foreign Language ordering environment, Upselling, and recurring charges like Subscriptions - it can take minutes to set your system up with Super Advanced Level. |
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T H R E E W A Y O F S E L L I N G
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K E Y C O D E S
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Keycodes can be either linked to a cgi engine on the merchant or your server or simply be a list of valid codes uploaded. Or it can be one number fits all. |
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R E D U C I N G F R A U D
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The merchant have sophisticated techniques for reducing fraud - are not 100% there yet but getting close. The merchant do reserve the right to issue refunds where have identified fraud. If the customer denies the charge and you cannot prove supply, or if there was a fraud and the bank chargeback to the merchant, he will do a refund but not penalize you with any chargeback fees although you will lose commission on chargebacks (not refunds). Don't get too obsessed about chargebacks - we suffer a handful a month out of thousands of transactions. We prefer to rely on anti-fraud and fraud preventive measures. |
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| L I M I T | |
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Per single transaction the limit is $9999.99, and you are monitorized first three months, when the card company will call your customers to confirm every order |
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E C C V A T R U L E S
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The merchant can calculate and collect the money required to be accounted for under EEC VAT rules. |
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P R O - F O R M A
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"Online Pro-Forma invoices available where required by the customer to release funds in advance of receipt of product. |
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| C U S T O M I Z A T I O N O F E M A I L R E C E I P T | |
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Customization of email receipts - fully configurable - you can have a different email for each delivery method used or each different version of your product or a mix of both (up to 81 possible emails per item sold)! |
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F L E X I B L E C O M A N D L I N E P A R A M E T E R S
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Very flexible command line parameters so you can build the order on your own website and squirt it through to the merchant to display a populated shopping basket to the customer. |
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A F F I L I A T E P R O G R A M
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Your dealers sell for you via the system and both they and you can see online reports. |
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P R I C E B A N D I N G
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Create discount tables for multiple product sales. |
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| A D M I N I S T R A T I O N A R E A | |
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Vendor/author administration area - you can see all your sales details in realtime. Also where you do refunds and edit your existing details and add new products. |
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F E W E R L O S T S A L E S
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This is true! On other online registration services the transaction simply appears to have failed if the card issuing bank requires a person call the authorization centre or if the merchant's bank and the card issuing bank get a communications failure (can happen in the run up to Christmas). - The system explains what has happened, to the customer, and invites him/her to either try another card or click a link to get the merchant to manually obtain authorization for the card concerned. We find that an amazing 15% or so of orders fail this way so think how may lost orders could be saved for you and what money that translates into. There is a list of all failed orders for you to see so you can contact the customer if you like and find out what happened - fully transparent. 5% of orders have an invalid expiry date. The bank gives a failure message but the system analyses the message and invites the customer to correct the date (the system only allow this 3 times for security reasons) - would you have lost that sale if using another merchant? |
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C O S T
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Each account costs a flat rate of $20 or £15 a month on top of the discount the merchant keep (1$ + 4%). |
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| For low volume sellers there is a plan that does not require a $20 fee and instead charges you a flat 9.9% (USD) or 15% (GBP) account this is also possible. With this discount rate you are charged whatever it costs to pay you at cost. (i.e up to $30 for a US dollar wire payment), USD check costs $5, GBP cheque costs $5 but all other methods like BACS, ACH and Paypal are free. | |
| Please note : NOT ACCEPTED: adult, email harvesters, bulk emailers, mailing lists, cybercafe software, webhosting and related services, any subscriptions over 1 month, as well as all products that are likely to assist email spammers. |
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