One of the best features of owning an internet-based business is the amount of money you save on start up costs, and ongoing overhead in comparison to businesses with physical locations. Not only do you not have to pay high rental or mortgage payments for the space, but you save on utilities, business insurance, and even online merchant account accounts!

As an online business, you almost have a requirement to accept credit card payments for your products or services. Have you ever been to a website that doesn't accept credit cards as payment? Consider how you would feel if you wanted to purchase something online but you couldn't enter your payment details in the site- would you take the time to write a check, put it in an envelope and mail to the company or would you just find the next website offering the same products that DOES accept credit cards? Web sites that accept credit card payments have sales that are 50-400% higher than web sites that do not accept credit payments. It is so easy to get set up to accept credit card payments that there really is no excuse for an online business not to accept them!

As a web business, you have a choice. You can apply for a traditional merchant account at any of the local banks and hope to get accepted (and likely pay a set up fee and sometimes an ongoing monthly fee for having the service), or you can use one of the numerous card processing companies that operate online and are geared toward online businesses just like yours. Many of the card processing providers you can use online allow you to set up your website for accepting credit cards with no set up fees!

Merchants Providing online merchant accounts

When you are just starting out as an online business, or you are a small business- you are probably not going to want any online merchant account provider that requires you process a minimum number of transactions each month. It is hard to predict what your minimum will be for a new business, and it might be better to pay a slightly higher per-transaction fee than to pay a higher monthly fee in exchange for a lower per-transaction fee based on a minimum number of cards processed each month.