Best way to accept credit cards for small business owner?

3 responses to “Best way to accept credit cards for small business owner?”

1. 
   TENI

   December 12, 2010 at 12:17 pm | Permalink

   Make sure, you read the fine print on the Credit card fraud and insurance reimbursement.
   I had used pay-pal to pay for 2 services in the past. They are not good in contacting merchant on getting your money back. The seller have to do it themselves. However they are secured. You can always charged the percent fee when client use credit card.

   Some small business, will not accept credit card under $10.00, so maybe you can do this policy.

2. 
   fmdynamics@att.net

   December 12, 2010 at 1:06 pm | Permalink

   When it comes to credit card processing there are 2 way to go about this. The first is through pay-pal or a like company.These are what we call in the industry 3rd party payment processors. These types of companies are good only if you are a small company, usually from home and if you are doing under a $1000.00 a month. The pros to this can of account is that it is an easy setup and simple to use. The cons are that it is web based, you as the business owner have no real protection against chargebacks(when a customer dispute a charge) pay-pal is always going to be on the customers side and not yours. Also it takes 4-5 days to receive your money. The 2nd options is opening a merchant account. This is meant for business owners that are doing over $1000 a month. These types of account is for retail locations, over the phone orders and ecommerce. This system is very fast, run a card and within seconds the customer is either approved or decline and then on to the next one. The pros are that you are protected against chargebacks, you receive your money in1-2 days and you have complete control over you account. The cons are it may cost a little more upfront for equipment but most companies can offer inexpensive equipment or possible free. As far as credit score go, merchant services companies are just like any other finance company. Some have very strict policies and some not so strict. Working in the merchant services industry myself I know certain companies that won’t touch anything under a 650. On the other hand I know of companies that have a min required score of 500. The nice thing about this is that unlike a finance company which will charge you more because of poor credit, merchant services companies do not. It is either you are approved or not, but you still receive the same price(% rate) regardless of credit score. The last thing is, it also depends on what type of business you have (restaurant, gas station, hair salon, etc) certain companies have an automatic approval policy based simple on the business type. Which means if you business type falls into certain “preferred business type” you will be automatically approved regardless of credit. In the industry we know certain types of companies work better and have less issues than other. To give you an example, if you are a restaurant and go into a bank and try to get a loan, 9-10 banks won’t even look at you. However in the merchant services industry if you want an account you will be approved 99.9 out of a 100 times. A merchant services account is just an open line of credit, just like a loan. If i had a little more info I would be able to give you exact details. Hope that this helped. If you need any more info don’t hesitate to ask.

3. 
   Ben S

   December 12, 2010 at 1:38 pm | Permalink

   May be this site can help you
   www.finance.a1onlineeducation.com