How to Accept Credit Card Payments

March 9, 2023 | Merchants | Dustin

Figuring out the best ways to get a merchant account and accept credit card payments on the internet, all while deciding which credit card payment processing companies are the right fit for your business needs can be overwhelming to say the least. That said, it is the lifeline of your eCommerce success and is essential when considering to sell online. If you are not set up to accept credit card payments online, you really don’t have a business.

Before we dive into how to accept credit card payment online and which choices you have for credit card processing companies, did you know:

When learning all you need to learn about how to accept credit card payments, you will need to consider a myriad of variables and how they affect your company. Yet, it is also important to remember that there is no right or wrong answer – just what works best for your business’s unique set of circumstances.

Take some opportunity to do some comparison shopping before picking out credit card processing companies for your much needed merchant account. In order to fully understand how to accept credit payments, this guide will  provide you all the information you need to find the right match for your business, including:

• How to accept credit card payments
• The two primary kinds of fraud activity, and how credit card processing companies can help prevent the issue
• How to handle disputes, lower your risk of fraud, and reduce your odds of chargebacks

Before we begin, be aware that there are 3 kinds of credit card processing companies: merchant accounts and payment gateway providers, all-in-one options, and simplified credit card processors.

Merchant Account and Payment Gateway Providers

The conventional way for resolving how to accept credit card payments online includes a blend of the company providing both a merchant account and a payment gateway. Providers like PayKings fall into this category.

A merchant account is a unique sort of business bank account that allows you accept credit card payments for seamless eCommerce payment processing.

An online payment gateway provider like PayKings includes a payment gateway along with your merchant account, which streamlines the processing of the payment transaction between the respective parties involved, such as your bank and the card issuer’s bank. Think of it as the digital version of a POS card swipe system employed in brick-and-mortar stores.

There are fees related to both the merchant account and payment gateway, however there are a lot of credit card processing companies out there, and if they’re reputable and reliable, like PayKings, they will offer competitive transaction fees or other incentives in your favor.

The benefits to having a payment gateway provider include having more handholding and customized client support along the way to setting up your merchant account, which means you will be able to get someone on the phone to answer your questions when you need to.

Payment gateway providers can also offer greater control over security and personalization for your merchant account and are a much better match for large companies needing a more tailored solution.

Fraud Activity and your Merchant Account

It’s imperative that an eCommerce payment processing merchants implement online credit card processing detection steps and provide some sort of eCommerce fraud prevention services to safeguard their merchant account from the costs of fraudulent transactions, and credit card fraud as a whole.

The costs included to the merchant for accepting a single fraudulent purchase is often more than double the cost of the actual purchase itself, because they cannot recover the original merchandise or services that had been fraudulently shipped, and because they must also repay the defrauded customer. This can have severe effects on a merchant account and the health of your credit card processing as a whole.

How to Handle Chargeback Disputes to your Merchant Account

If your credit card processing company sees that your chargeback ratio is more than 2 percent, it will almost always cause for a termination of your account. Therefore, it is vital to keep your ratio low in order to maintain credit card processing through your merchant account.

Merchants who want to securely and safely accept credit card payments should work only with credit card processing companies like PayKings, who specialize in high risk merchant accounts. If your business is in danger of receiving a high ratio of chargebacks, then it most certainly is considered to be high risk.

In terms of disputing a chargeback – prevention is always the best way to mitigate chargebacks being filed. For more on how to keep your chargeback ratio low, please click here.

That said, signs that a sale has been made can help with disputes to your merchant account, including the number of items sold on a signed receipt. Also photographs or emails proving a link between the individual receiving the merchandise as well as the cardholder is great evidence, or demonstrating that the cardholder disputing the trade is in possession of the merchandise; which will definitely help dispute the credit card chargeback.