Demystifying Merchant Accounts

Accepting credit card payment online such as Visa and MasterCard is essential to Internet business. This article provides tips for applying merchant account.

Accepting credit card payments for goods and services has become a huge business. Accepting Visa and MasterCard as well American Express and Discover can add hundreds if not thousands of dollars to your sales figures each month. The problem then becomes which company do you apply with and how much does it cost?

Because it is a huge business more and more banks and merchant service firms are competing for your business. Here are some things you need to know about merchant services.

A) Every bank and merchant account service provider charges a monthly fee. Some state it is for your monthly statement, some just say it is an additional fee for the account. Either way, it ranges from $5.00 to $25 per month. You will get separate statements for Visa/MasterCard (from your merchant provider), American Express (from AmEx directly) and Discover (from Discover directly).

B) There is a discount fee. A discount fee is the percent of the transaction the merchant provider will take for doing business with them. Right now it ranges from 2% to 3%. Visa/MasterCard have one discount fee, American Express another and Discover yet another. (That’s the reason for having three separate statements). American Express and Discover tend to have higher discount fees than Visa/MasterCard.

C) There is also a per transaction fee. This ranges from $0.15 to $0.25 per transaction. Again, American Express and Discover will have different transaction rates.

Be careful and read the small print before signing the application. Here are some questions to ask that have a major impact on your cash flow.

1) How long from the date of the charge until the money is deposited into your checking account? Some are as quick as 24 hours (that’s business hours). Some hold funds for as much as 14 days before going into your checking account.

2) At what amount will the order(s) be held for verification? Some hold funds right away until they get 10-20 batches verified. Some hold anything over a set amount. I have been told that only orders over $1000 will be held. I have also been told that nothing will be released until 10 batches, regardless of size, have been verified. One merchant provider held more than $10,000 until 12 batches were verified.

Important Note: You must keep paper documentation for each order as well as tracking numbers and/or delivery receipts, if you ship merchandise. This is needed to verify orders for your provider as well as to settle disputes down the road.

3) For many this is not an issue but for others it's huge. What is the maximum amount (in dollars) that you can process each month? The standard is $20,000 to $25,000. Anything over that and the merchant provider will shut down your account. This risk is too high for them especially for unproven, unsecured accounts.

4) They have the option of shutting down your credit card processing. What is their criteria? What would cause them to shut down your account? Do they have to give you notice? Common sense says they must inform you before taking such as drastic step but I have seen it happen. Accounts have been closed and bank accounts frozen without a phone call, email or fax.

5) How are charge backs handled and what is the fee for a charge back? Do you get the chance to state your case or is the money immediately refunded to the customer without your approval? You will probably find that American Express and Discover will let you dispute the charge back and work with the customer. Visa/MasterCard don't always give you the option.

6) Who is your point of contact? Get a name so you know who to go to with questions and issues after your application is approved. The person that processes your application through is not the person that will have answers for you later on.

7) If you are using merchant services in conjunction with your web site, does the merchant work with the back-end of your site? Do you have to manually enter orders? For example, Yahoo!Stores only works with First Data linked merchant services. Innovative Merchant Services works with gateways such as Verisign and Authorize.net. QuickBooks and Chase Manhattan Merchant Services require manual entry but are processed online.

As far as merchant service providers go, I like Card Services International. The company has good rates and have ecommerce as well as offline(traditional) processing options. In my opinion, it is better to go with a larger, well- established credit card merchant. Smaller firms have a tendency to have less customer service, more restrictions and less input from you.

Choose your merchant service provider wisely. Credit processing can have a huge impact on your bottom line.

original link:www.FlemmingBusinessServices.com

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Demystifying Merchant Accounts

Accepting credit card payment online such as Visa and MasterCard is essential to Internet business. This article provides tips for applying merchant account.

Accepting credit card payments for goods and services has become a huge business. Accepting Visa and MasterCard as well American Express and Discover can add hundreds if not thousands of dollars to your sales figures each month. The problem then becomes which company do you apply with and how much does it cost?

Because it is a huge business more and more banks and merchant service firms are competing for your business. Here are some things you need to know about merchant services.

A) Every bank and merchant account service provider charges a monthly fee. Some state it is for your monthly statement, some just say it is an additional fee for the account. Either way, it ranges from $5.00 to $25 per month. You will get separate statements for Visa/MasterCard (from your merchant provider), American Express (from AmEx directly) and Discover (from Discover directly).

B) There is a discount fee. A discount fee is the percent of the transaction the merchant provider will take for doing business with them. Right now it ranges from 2% to 3%. Visa/MasterCard have one discount fee, American Express another and Discover yet another. (That’s the reason for having three separate statements). American Express and Discover tend to have higher discount fees than Visa/MasterCard.

C) There is also a per transaction fee. This ranges from $0.15 to $0.25 per transaction. Again, American Express and Discover will have different transaction rates.

Be careful and read the small print before signing the application. Here are some questions to ask that have a major impact on your cash flow.

1) How long from the date of the charge until the money is deposited into your checking account? Some are as quick as 24 hours (that’s business hours). Some hold funds for as much as 14 days before going into your checking account.

2) At what amount will the order(s) be held for verification? Some hold funds right away until they get 10-20 batches verified. Some hold anything over a set amount. I have been told that only orders over $1000 will be held. I have also been told that nothing will be released until 10 batches, regardless of size, have been verified. One merchant provider held more than $10,000 until 12 batches were verified.

Important Note: You must keep paper documentation for each order as well as tracking numbers and/or delivery receipts, if you ship merchandise. This is needed to verify orders for your provider as well as to settle disputes down the road.

3) For many this is not an issue but for others it's huge. What is the maximum amount (in dollars) that you can process each month? The standard is $20,000 to $25,000. Anything over that and the merchant provider will shut down your account. This risk is too high for them especially for unproven, unsecured accounts.

4) They have the option of shutting down your credit card processing. What is their criteria? What would cause them to shut down your account? Do they have to give you notice? Common sense says they must inform you before taking such as drastic step but I have seen it happen. Accounts have been closed and bank accounts frozen without a phone call, email or fax.

5) How are charge backs handled and what is the fee for a charge back? Do you get the chance to state your case or is the money immediately refunded to the customer without your approval? You will probably find that American Express and Discover will let you dispute the charge back and work with the customer. Visa/MasterCard don't always give you the option.

6) Who is your point of contact? Get a name so you know who to go to with questions and issues after your application is approved. The person that processes your application through is not the person that will have answers for you later on.

7) If you are using merchant services in conjunction with your web site, does the merchant work with the back-end of your site? Do you have to manually enter orders? For example, Yahoo!Stores only works with First Data linked merchant services. Innovative Merchant Services works with gateways such as Verisign and Authorize.net. QuickBooks and Chase Manhattan Merchant Services require manual entry but are processed online.

As far as merchant service providers go, I like Card Services International. The company has good rates and have ecommerce as well as offline(traditional) processing options. In my opinion, it is better to go with a larger, well- established credit card merchant. Smaller firms have a tendency to have less customer service, more restrictions and less input from you.

Choose your merchant service provider wisely. Credit processing can have a huge impact on your bottom line.

original link:www.FlemmingBusinessServices.com

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Credit Cards, Merchant Accounts, and Your Bottomline

his questions and answers type article discusses details of accept credit card payment online, merchant account application, and internet payment solutions.

Q: I'm opening a gift shop and want to be able to accept credit cards. I talked to the branch manager at my bank, but he didn't seem to know much about how it all worked. He did say that I would need something called "a merchant account" and something else called "a credit card processor." Beyond that he seemed as clueless as I am. I'm thinking about going to another bank. Can you explain how that all works? -- Mary Ann G.

A: Mary Ann, I'm going to give your banker the benefit of the doubt and say that a lack of knowledge regarding the specifics of credit card processing is not necessarily a reflection of the banker's competence. I have found over the years that most bankers, no matter how experienced or knowledgeable about the banking business they my be, don't really know much about how credit card processing and acceptance really works. That's because the task of accepting and verifying credit card purchases is handled by third party service companies who process and deposit (or settle) the funds into a bank merchant account.

The decision to accept credit cards is a wise one for any retailer. I agree with financial guru Dave Ramsey's teachings regarding the use and abuse of credit cards. Many people dig deep holes with credit cards that are hard to climb out of.

But, from a practical business point of view, any retail business that does not accept credit cards is leaving money on the table. Research has shown that accepting credit cards increases revenue and helps with cash flow since you receive the money within a couple of days instead of waiting up to a week for a check to clear.

Credit cards don't bounce, as some checks have a tendency to do. Credit card users are also more likely to buy on impulse and spend more when they do. Bad news for them, but good news for you. If you have a social conscience concerning the use of consumer credit cards, a retail operation probably isn't the business for you.

To accept credit cards at a brick and mortar location you typically need four things. The requirements may vary a little, but the following applies in most cases.

You will need:

(1) A way to enter the customer's credit card information into a verification and processing system. This can be done with a swipe terminal, point of sale system, or by calling the credit card in by phone
(2) A credit card gateway company to verify the credit card's validity and process the payments;
(3) A credit card merchant account in which the gateway company will deposit payments made to you; and
(4) A business bank account into which the settled funds will ultimately be deposited for your use.

Here's how the process works.

(1) You make a sale and the customer pays by credit card.
(2) Using a card swipe machine or telephone, you contact what is known as a "gateway company" who takes the card information you submit and verifies that the card is valid and the charge can be made against the card account. The gateway company returns an approval code for the purchase.

With a swipe machine or point of sale terminal the verification process happens in a matter of seconds. If you're doing telephone verification it can take a couple of minutes. You call the gateway company, give them the credit card number and expiration date and they give you an approval code that you write on the credit card charge slip. Either way, the money is typically deposited in your merchant account within 24 to 48 hours (less fees, of course).

You'll also need to apply for merchant status with each credit card company whose card you want to accept. To do business with American Express and Discover all you have to do is fill out an application, but to accept Visa and MasterCard you must have a merchant account. A merchant account is a special bank account set up for the expressed purpose of accepting credit card payments processed by the gateway company. Merchant accounts are usually associated with banks, though you can also use credit card merchant account service companies to perform the same function if you can not get approved for a bank merchant account.

Applying for a merchant account at a bank is much the same as applying for a loan. The only difference is sometimes a loan is easier to get. There is the prerequisite paperwork to complete and pledging of the first born, followed by an approval process that can take up to several weeks. And you are not guaranteed that the bank will approve your merchant account, even if you have been a favored customer for many years. Banks have strict regulations regarding the granting of merchant accounts and if issuing you a merchant account in anyway puts the bank at risk of losing money, you will be turned down. Banks always make decisions based on economics, not relationships (no matter what your banker tells you).

Requirements for qualifying for a merchant account varies among banks, but in general the bank will look at the following criteria:

How long have you been in business? Business longevity suggests a history of stability, efficient management, and good financial health.

What is your product or service? Does your product lend itself to a high rate of returns and chargebacks? A chargeback is a disputed credit card charge that is refunded to the buyer and charged against your account. You are accessed a chargeback fee that can be as much as $20 per event. If your business lends itself to high chargebacks, you will not get the merchant account.

How's your credit report? Banks always look at how much you owe and how you pay your bills, so it's important to have good financial and trade references. If you have a history of late payments or defaults to vendors, it will count against you.

What is your anticipated volume of sales and average transaction amount? The more money you make, the more money the bank makes. If you anticipate just a few credit card charges per week it may not be enough to justify the merchant account in the bank's eyes.

Is your business categorized as a "high risk merchant?" High risk merchants are those with the highest instances of credit card fraud and chargebacks. High risk merchants include many types of internet-based businesses, telemarketers, travel and cruise businesses, and membership clubs. Being a high risk merchant dramatically decreases your chances of getting a merchant account with a bank.

Being a high risk merchant doesn't mean that you can't get a merchant account from somewhere else. Thanks to the growth of ecommerce in recent years there are a number of alternative companies that will provide you with a merchant account, sometimes with more perks than a traditional account, but almost always with higher fees.

Also, not all banks support internet merchant accounts. If yours does not, shop around for one that does. We'll take a look at accepting credit cards online in next week's column.

Here's to your success.
original link:http://www.articleplus.com

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Overture - A Can't Lose Pay Per Click Search Engine Marketing Strategy

This article provides a quick list of improper search engine optimization practices. You can use it as a checklist if you perform search engine optimization yourself.

The absolute quickest surefire way that I know of to get instant website traffic is using pay-per-click search engines. You bid on the search terms of your choice and as soon as your account is set up they start sending traffic your way. I use a variety of pay per click but Overture Search Engine Submission is my favorite. Today I'd like to show you how and why I use them.

With regular search engines, you can't really "tell" them what terms you want to be listed under. With pay per click search engines, you get to specify exactly what terms you'd like to be listed under. At Overture and some of the others, the staff does review your listing to confirm it is appropriate. If your listing is appropriate, you get listed under the term you want to attract targeted traffic with, and you get to specify how you would like your listing to read.

There *are* less expensive ways of getting traffic to your site. However, it is not as tightly controlled. Overture's minimum bid is 10 cents per click. With many terms, that's all you need to bid to appear in the top listings (even at number 1). Controlling exactly how your listing appears ensures you spend your money attracting only the traffic you want. It also ensure that you discourage the type of traffic that you don't want.

I'll give you an example for illustration. I have a site that sells a "soul food cookbook." I want the traffic I attract to this site to be interested in obtaining a soul food cookbook.... especially if I am paying for this traffic. So I use that phrase or a related phrase in my Overture listing. I also use it in my title and the description. I tell them exactly what they will find on my website in my listing. Traffic attracted through these listings are seeking "soul food cookbooks" so they buy my product!

In deciding how much to bid on a pay-per-click term you must know your conversion rate. You need to know how many sales each dollar generates. For example, I spend an average of $1 on Overture traffic for each sale that I make from this traffic. I sell a $20 cookbook and my profit margin is sufficient to make this campaign smart business. The traffic from Overture also generates 4 signups to my website recipe exchange mailing list for each dollar I spend. It could be much higher but I land the traffic on a webpage focused on making the sale rather than getting new subscribers. A very high percentage of these subscribers will eventually purchase either my cookbook or a related product.

A spill over effect of this pay-per-click campaign is that my Overture submission gets me a top listing on many other search engines. Overture's paid listing feed the search results at Yahoo!, MSN, InfoSpace, Lycos, Alta Vista and Netscape. This spillover drives incredible traffic to my sites. For example, my traffic from MSN nearly doubled with one of my Overture submission campaigns. Microsoft is the default homepage for a lot of internet users (since it is the default browser pre-installed on a lot of computers), and having a top listing with them is well worth the expense.

When setting up an account at Overture, the most important thing you can do is to make sure you are targeting the right keyword phrases and that you really finess your listing. You want customers to arrive at your site ready to buy your product or join your list. You don't want curiosity seekers when you arepaying for traffic. You don't want to get "cute" with your listings since attracting the wrong visitors really does no one any good. It might even generate a lot of complaints.

Overture has a tool you can use to investigate what keywords were searched on the most - recently. I use this tool but I also subscribe to a service that emails me the top 500 most searched terms every week. They send me weekly reports and I build mini sites around these terms. I sometimes funnel traffic from these mini sites to other topical sites. Some mini sites I also design as direct sales sites. Both strategies will work well for you if properly employed.

A properly designed pay per click campaign is a can't loose proposition. You know that for every $100 spent exactly how much you can expect to earn. The only variable in the formula for me is how fast Overture can send me this traffic. You do want to bid the minimum bid possible to get the listing you want. You don't need to be number 1 since it is the words in your listing that really generates the click. I do consider being one of the top 3 bidders very important.

I also keep my mini sites' costs down by hosting my keyword rich domain names on quality, low-costs hosts. I use a web host that allows you to host additional domains for only $5 per domain. You do have to have at least one domain hosted on their regular $25 per month plan (500 meg of space and full-featured). Then you can host as many additional domains as you want for only an extra $5 each. This makes building a series of mini sites related to the theme of your product or main site so affordable you really should use this business strategy.

Get the Full Details on Starting an Overture Account

I've just given you a very brief overview of one of my pay per click strategies. Using this strategy, I routinely turn every thousand dollars invested into over $10,000. With the right product or service, you can too.

Willie Crawford has taught thousands the secrets of operating a successful on-line business through his free Internet Business Success Course. It's more extensive than many $197 courses. Sign up today and start building your *successful* online business: www.williecrawford.com

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Search Engine Optimization Advice

Search engine optimization refers to the technique of making your web pages search engine friendly so that search engines are more easy to understand and analyze your website. Consequently, your site has a better chance to gain high search engine ranking. This article describes some practical search engine optimization technqiues.

Search Engine Optimization Software can also offer you expert advice, and you can download it for a free trial.

Search Engine Optimization Techniques:

{title}...{/title}

This tag is to be a winner. This is a primary spot to include our keywords for SE spiders, bots or crawlers ("spider" hereafter). {title} tags are the best "dainty dish" for SE spiders. They "eat them as cakes", so make title tags to be "tasty" for them, about 65 characters long.

{meta name=description content="..."}

Important Meta tag. Very often the description you put will be shown at the SE searching results. To my personal opinion they have more important marketing role of attracting visitors than actual optimization. The SEs' trust in "description" tag as well as our next "keywords" tag has been greatly discriminated due to fraud and unfair competition. Make it no more than 250 characters long, including, of course, your targeted keywords as well.

{meta name=keywords content="..."}

Another advisable to use Meta tag should be included with all your targeted and untargeted, but related to the topic, key phases separated by commas. Note that highly popular and stand alone keywords like "web-site", "internet", "business" etc. will give you nothing more than increase the size of your web-page. I won't be mistaken if I say that about tens of billion of web-pages have them. Don't overuse your keywords as well, spiders don't like to be forced to eat what they don't want to.

{meta name=author content="..."}{meta name=copyright content="..."}{meta name=language content="..."} etc.

Subsidiary Meta tags used are more likely to satisfy webmasters' ego, rather than any real help in rankings.

{h1}...{/h1} {h2}...{/h2} {h3}...{/h3}

In contrary to the previous tags the importance of, let's call them, {body} tags have substantially risen for simple reason, they are readable by visitors and it is hardly to cheat SE with them than Meta description or keywords tags where any webmaster may put anything s/he wants. Given that these tags determine the headers of your web-page from the SE spiders' viewpoint, try to include your targeted keywords in them.

{img src=: alt="..."}

"Alt" is just a comment for every image you insert into the page. Use this knowledge at your advantage. Include your key phrases where possible and safe. By "safe" I mean common sense, don't input comment like "ebook package" into the image of the button that leads to your partner, say, "Pizza ordering" web-site. On the contrary, if your web-site has graphical menu and buttons, it is very wise to include "alt" comments according to directions they lead to, i.e. "Home", "Services", "About Us", "Contacts" etc. If for any reason visitors have their browser with images turned off, they won't see any menu if you haven't inserted "alt" comments.

Content

Your informational coverage should be keyword/phrase rich, the same way as headers. In general the more relevant key phrases your textual information will contain, the better your chances of being "remarked" by SE spider are.

HTML text format tags like bolding {b}, italic type {i} and underlining {u} may also have some weight in SEs placement.

Key word density and frequency are another indexes vastly used by SE to rank web-pages. Don't overuse them though.

Link popularity (page rank)

Another extremely important parameter for your listing position nowadays. In general the more links on third party web-sites point to your site the better. Although try to avoid "link farms" or other "clubs' the only aim of which is to artificially increase your link popularity. These tactics may simply result in penalization or banning of your web-site.

Link popularity without any doubt helps to increase the relevance of searched terms more often than it doesn't, but makes SEO even more far-reaching target, because establishing "incoming" links pointing to your site is beyond your direct power.

To be short, your task is to find web-sites that have highest SE listing positions and/or page rank (determined via Google Toolbar) and negotiate a link to your site in return for some service, product or solicit simple exchange of links. As you see these "manual" work is the most time-consuming, but it repays if you are focused to get as much relevant links as possible.

You may apply viral strategies by offering some free/paid service that implies putting a link back to your site.

Google has developed its own link popularity evaluation tool called Page Rank. It is calculated basing on consistently changing number rules: current rank of the site the link to your page is pointing from, its relevance to your web-site topic etc.

Fake tactics

They are what I call them and used by webmasters similar to ways some "marketers" use spam to promote their businesses. Unfortunately, usual internet users don't have ability to "ban" spammers the same way SEs penalize those "smart" webmasters. I don't recommend you to use any of these tactics, even on someone's "advice". They include excessive use or related and totally unrelated keywords, comment tags, hidden layers, text on the background of the same color, artificial link farms, numerous entry pages etc. This game simply won't be worth candles if your web-site is banned for good.

robots.txt file

Very important file every web-site should have but very little actually has. It allows you to literally rule or direct SE spider to the "proper" places, explaining what and where should be scanned, not just blind waiting of your lucky day. With its help you can also protect your confidential web-pages and or directories from scanning and showing at the SE searching results, very important feature many web-masters solve with "tons" of Java or even Perl coding instead of one line string in the robots.txt file that will forbid to scan "download", so-called "thank you" pages or anything you want! General rules of creating robots.txt file you can find here http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/robots.html

Design & Layout issues

Next point is to have a textual info. The simple declaration of content rich web-site is not enough, SEs need text to scan.

Clear to follow links. If you have Flash or Java applet navigation menu, make sure to duplicate somewhere and include HTML links as well. Most SE spiders cannot distinguish dynamically created web-pages with the help of ASP, Perl, PHP or other languages. It is also clear that all web-pages, access to which was forbidden (no matter how) by administrator, would also be left unnoticed. The same relates to HTML frame sites. What frames actually do is complicate the way web-site is being scanned, no more, no less. When I see web-site made of frames, it is like webmaster telling me: "I want lower SE position."

Because of the excessive work spiders have to do in order to scan as many pages as possible, their scanning "accuracy", if we can say so, have dropped, so they will hardly scan each and every of your pages from the very top to the bottom, it is more likely to be selective scanning, so, to ease this process you should try to arrange the most valuable info, including header tags and text at the very top of web-pages. Having "site map" page with all link connections of your site not only does it help your potential visitors, but SEs as well.

All link names, inside your informational content, are to contain your related keywords or phrases, not just "click here" or "download here".

Avoid a lot of javascripts, cascade style sheet tags or a lot of image tags at the top of the page that could occupy more than a page of HTML source code with almost no textual info. If you have java or .css coding save them as separate files and upload on request, leaving one string of code in your HTML document only. This tactic is also very smart considering general web-page optimization and space saving purposes.

Allow to the Internet market know your business better.

original link :http://www.articleplus.com

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