All about Ecommerce

You might be having a lot of questions about ecommerce. In this article, we shall discuss some of the common doubts that people have.

Maybe you are wondering how you can accept credit card orders on your website. Well, for that, you need some basic elements to be able to accept online orders via credit card – a credit card merchant account with a bank, a method by which to collect the orders and the credit card information (either order forms or shopping cart system), and Secure Socket Layer (SSL) Encryption – which will provide your customers a safe and secure method by which they can transmit their credit card and order information from you. Now what is a credit card merchant account? Well, put simply – it means that your business can accept credit cards in lieu of payment for goods and services. For example, a customer will provide his or her credit card number when a sale is made. What you do is this – you submit the credit card number, the expiration date, and the amount of the sale made to your merchant account provider (which may be typically a bank). And within a few days, the funds are electronically deposited to your business bank account.

So how can you get a credit card merchant account? Well, merchant account services are offered by most financial institutions, and also by banks. All you need to do is check with your current bank, and ask for an application form. You would also be interested to know that there are companies that specialize in providing merchant account services and also the lease and sale of credit card terminals, processing software, etc. You can find these companies in the phone book, or even search online for “merchant account providers”. The fees tend to vary from provider to provider, so take the time to compare before choosing.

Now we shall talk about real time credit card processing – this means that your web order pages are immediately submitting your customer’s credit card information to your merchant bank account for authorization, via the internet. This is useful if you think that much online transactions will be made, or if you want to give your customers immediate access to your services and products. Let’s take an example – selling software that a customer can download immediately, right after the credit card payment has been authorized real time. The functionality of real time credit card processing may mean that you have to pay additional costs beyond the standard processing – these include additional service fees from your merchant account provider bank, additional software requirements for real time processing, customized ordering pages which are created for your website, and web server payment gateway software configuration and setup. It is advisable that you do some careful planning and research before you launch the real time payment system on your website, do look into the total costs and the expected return on investment.