Once you are ready with your ecommerce website and you now you want to start online payment transaction using your website then you need to get an merchant account so that your clients can make online payments for the services instantly. For getting merchant account you need to have a back account where all funds would be transferred and bank agrees to allow you to charge your clients credit cards for using your services. Bank will debit all funds of your customers into your account who are depositing funds through your website. Choosing a merchant account is a critical stage, if you are into e-commerce business and wants to have online transactions though your website. You have two options for getting a merchant account, first is normal method in which you acquire your own personal merchant account, this is most preferred and flexible way when it comes to accept credit cards as preferred payment option and the second method is using a third party merchant account. In this form third party allows you to accept credit cards payment using their merchant account. This form is usually preferred by webmasters who have very low volume of payment transaction or who are unable to get their own merchant account for some reason. This form of accepting payments is a bit expensive as you need to pay certain percentage for using their services.
There are advantages and disadvantage of both form of merchant accounts :
Advantage of personal and third party merchant account :
If you are having your own merchant account you have very low credit card percentage fees, can use your own payment and ordering system, you have much more control over all financial transactions for your account, all payments are deposited instantly etc…
If you are using third party merchant account for getting payments deposited at your account you have following advantages such as, you don’t need to deal with bank directly for your payment issues and its much hasslefree, you don’t have to invest more as compare to what you pay for getting a merchant account, thus its much cheaper to get a third party merchant account.
Disadvantages of personal and third party merchant account :
If you opt for getting a personal merchant account then you need to pay large startup fees and would also have to pay monthly fees for accessing this service whereas if you are using third party merchant account then you will have to pay higher percentage fees for using their services, you will have to wait for getting your funds deposited in your account, you don’t have much control over financial/payment transactions, you cant use your own shopping cart and will have to use cart which is provided by your service provider.
Thus it all depends on your requirements, budget and the number of financial transactions which may be carried out through your ecommerce website.
Eukhost do provide free shopping cart with their Affordable web hosting packages.
Posted under ecommerce hosting
This post was written by admin on October 16, 2009
