Merchant Account Basics

If you have a business website and want to take secure payments online, then it is important that you set up a facility to allow you to accept credit and debit card payments. Merchant accounts are a good way of integrating plastic card processing features onto your website, and often come as an additional extra with many mainstream business bank account services, and online banking companies such as PayPal also provide this service.

Advantages
* Creates more payment options allowing you to reach a wide customer base
* Decreases risk of payments being declined, as each transaction is checked against the customers own account balance and if insufficient funds available the card will not process.
* Instant card payments improves business cash flow

Disadvantages
* Merchant accounts do have some significant fees that you may find eating into your profits.
* Fraud Liability – if you process a card payment that later turns out to be fraudulent you could end up paying back the money to the card company, regardless of whether you have fulfilled the order or not.