| ||
|
|
|
|
| ||
|
|
|
How To Find the Best Merchant Account For Your Business
What a great idea! Start accepting credit cards and watch your profits soar. Nothing could be simpler. Or so you thought until you began researching merchant accounts. It can all get extremely confusing. There is an easy way to find the best deal that suits your business. You'll be able to compare apples to apples and have a clear picture of what the merchant account will cost you. Let's take a look at some of the phrases you'll encounter (in layman's terms) when you begin to search for a merchant account. --- Merchant Account Provider - The company who arranges for your payment hardware or software and your ability to accept credit cards. --- Nova - The company who processes the credit card transactions and forwards them to the appropriate credit card company for payment (Visa, MasterCard, American Express, etc.) --- Set Up Fee - The one-time amount the merchant account provider charges to set up your company in their system. For this example, we'll use a set up fee of $65.00. --- Discount Fee -One amount (there are others) that Nova and the merchant account provider deduct from each sale as a portion of their payment for your merchant account. We'll use a discount fee of 2.25%. --- Per Transaction Fee - This is a second amount that the two companies subtract from each transaction as a portion of their payment. For our example, we'll pick a per transaction fee of $.35. --- Terminal or Gateway Fee - Whether you have a real terminal or a virtual gateway via the Internet, you will be assessed monthly charges to cover the use of that service. Let's say $10.00 for our example. --- Statement Fee - The fee for your merchant account provider to send an itemized statement each month. An average amount we can use is $15.00. --- Annual Fee - An annual fee just for having your merchant account. For the annual fee example, we'll choose $35.00. I know what you're thinking! But don't give up before you start. Remember, I'm going to show you a way to decipher all this information. Choose a number -- any number. This will be the total number of transactions you think you might conduct during the course of a year. For our example, we'll use 100. Next, choose an average transaction amount for your product or services. We'll say $175.00 for now. Finally, we'll calculate a year's worth of charges by using the amounts above and within the definitions. Set Rate Charges: Set up Fee = $65.00 (one time only) Gateway Fee = $10.00/mth Statement Fee = $15.00/mth Annual Fee = $25.00/yr Then multiply your estimated number of transactions by the $ .35 per transaction fee. That equals $35.00. Next, multiply the average transaction amount ($175) by the discount rate of 2.25%. That equals $3.94. You've estimated that you'll have 100 transactions per year, so again, multiply the $3.94 by the 100 transactions. The total equals $394.00. All that is left is to add them all up. Set up Fee = $65.00 (one time only) Gateway Fee = $10.00 x 12 months = $120.00/yr Statement Fee = $15.00 x 12 months = $180.00/yr Annual Fee = $25.00/yr Per Transaction Fees = $35.00/yr Discount Rate Fees = $394.00/yr Total Fees & Charges For One Year = $819.00 Let's look at one other quick example just to show you that looks can be deceiving. This company offers the following rates: Set up Fee = FREE Gateway Fee = $15.00/mth Statement Fee = $10.00/mth Annual Fee = FREE Per Transaction Fees $ .30 Discount Rate Fees = 2.35% Software Lease = $24.95/mth Based on our same $175 average transaction and 100 transactions per year, we come out with the following figures: Set up Fee = FREE Gateway Fee = $15.00 x 12 = $180.00 Statement Fee = $10.00 x 12 = $120.00 Annual Fee = FREE Per Transaction Fees (100 transactions x $ .30 = $30.00) Discount Rate Fees = $175 avg. transaction x 2.35% = $4.11 x 100 transactions = $411.00) Software Lease = $24.95 x 12 = $299.40 (an additional fee our first provider didn't charge) Total Fees & Charges For One Year = $1040.40. Even with free set up and no annual fee, this company still charges over $200 per year more than the first merchant account provider we previewed. Be very careful - the word "free" can often times be deceiving. Merchant accounts can open a world of new business for your company. They can provide a very convenient way for your clients to pay - and for YOU to get your money. However, when you shop for a merchant account, be sure to use a standard unit of measure like we've outlined above to be very sure that you are getting the deal best suited for your company. Diane C. Hughes * ProBizTips.com FREE Report: Amazingly Simple (Yet Super Powerful) Ways To Skyrocket Your Sales And Build Your Business Into A Tower of Profits! ==>> http://madmarketer.com/diane
Add to these social bookmarking sites: 
MORE RESOURCES:
Notice: Undefined index: TITLE in /var/www/vhosts/harmonyhollow.net/httpdocs/webmaster-resources/ecommerce/inc/rss.inc on line 103 Google News |
|
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
Get Out of The Way Get out of the way and make it easy for your visitors to find what they want.Recently I completed a report for a site that was the most 'peaceful' and among the most 'useful' I had seen in a long time. The House Of Print.Com Publishing has always been a difficult business to promote successfully, which titles by which authors to promote, which genre, will it be fiction or non-fiction? Will they sell? Will they make money, both for the publisher and for the author? So many questions which there is no definitive answer and so the publisher takes a chance with his money and his time and resources and decides on which books to publish, promote and distribute to the bookshops. He may only distribute to bookshops in his own country and if they don't sell well enough, will not be seen by anyone else in the world. Rules for Achieving Online Success The Internet brought a great deal of benefits to our life. Access to a lot of free and useful information is, probably, one of the most important out of them. The Top 10 E-Commerce Ways to Follow up with Clients - Part 1 Did you know that 80% of all sales are made after the 5th contact? The biggest mistake we make is not following up with our clients regularly. We not only lose the chance to offer other services and products, we lose the chance for satisfied clients' referrals. Government Buying and Selling on the Internet Global Insight, a leading economic and financial forecasting company, (formerly DRI-WEFA), states that all levels of government (federal, state, and local) should see steady increases in the purchases of goods and services through the year 2009.Vendors willing to make the commitment to sell to government can reap the benefits of this projected government spending. Outsourcing Your Ecommerce Order Fulfillment When your eCommerce business grows to the point where you can no longer package and ship the orders yourself, it's time to begin outsourcing your order fulfillment. Although all order fulfillment centers offer the same basic services, their individual methods and costs will help you choose one over the other. Accept Credit Cards Online Without a Merchant Account There are two major ways to accept credit cards on your website. The first and most expensive is to have your own merchant account. Your Site is all Direct Marketing This may not be a popular view, but I think writing a web site is very similar to writing a piece of direct mail. I'm not talking about smash-and-grab fliers. Evaluating Vendors of Ecommerce Fulfillment Services Once your website has secured an order, you have to fulfill it. While the fulfillment of digital goods is usually handled online, the delivery of physical goods is handled in a "brick-and-mortar" world. 7 Questions to Ask A Potential Internet Merchant Account Provider Recently I went looking for an online merchant account, with disastrous results. I made the mistake of taking information at face value and relying on the ecommerce merchant account provider's good reputation in other areas. Beginner Ecommerce Mistakes This is a short article because in the constraints of time and space preclude me from writing a 10 page article. Recently i built a ecommerce web site titled Cynscorion Products that sells knifes. Choosing An Internet Merchant Account Surf to Google and perform a search on "Internet Merchant Account". The results are staggering (472,000 results!) If you have created a web based business and need to accept credit card payments, your choices are limitless. How E-commerce Web Site Design Differs From Normal Web Design When it comes to e-commerce everything is a little bit different, even the web site design for an e-commerce site as compared to a normal web design. If you are interested in developing an e-commerce site, then it is important to learn about the differences between the two types of website designs and how you can design the best e-commerce website with your resources. Shopping from Your Cell Phone with Froogle Wireless Many surfers already know about Froogle, Google's shopping portal that is still in beta testing. Google has now expanded their Froogle service so that it is available on WML-enabled cellular phones. Top Ten Qualities to Look for in an Online Pharmacy As you may have noted, there are thousands or even hundreds of thousands of websites selling pharmaceutical products or drugs. These are called ONLINE PHARMACIES or PHARMACIES ONLINE. 7 Key Steps To Reduce Refunds and Chargebacks One sure-fire way to loosing out big time on your business profits is from incidences of excessive refunds and chargeback requests. If the number is high in any period you could risk loosing your third party merchant account altogether. Why Our Site Was Removed From The ODP Our website, Best Of The Home, has been listed in the Open Directory Project for over a year. Recently, I conducted a search of the ODP for my site, to update it, and found that it was no longer listed in any category. Excuse Me, Are You Wasting Traffic? The largest cost and concern of an internet business is customer acquisition; traffic. Both quantity and quality of traffic directly determines the succes of an internet business. Eleven Things You Must Know About A Drop Shipping Directory And Its Company 1. Balance - You want to find a directory rich in many different categories of products rather than the quantity of products available. The Webmasters Assistant There are many tools available to a webmaster to analyse website traffic allowing them to monitor the number of visitors, see what pages have been accessed and even the length of time each visitors spends accessing the website.However, despite the considerable data available what is missing is anything to tell the webmaster what the visitor was thinking.
|
| Home | Site Map |
|
| © 2006 | |