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Increase_Sales_with_Payment_Solutions
| Increase Sales with Payment Solutions
Take a second and imagine your shopping on a website, find the
product you've been looking for, and as you go to the order form
to purchase it, you find out that the company doesn't accept
payment online. Instead, you must mail a check. If you were like
me, you would probably click off the site and search for another
company that offers the same products and *does* accept payment
online, whether it is by credit card or online check. It doesn't
take a super, intelligent person to realize that it is
inconvenient, time consuming, and adds on lag time till you get
your purchase when you must sit down, write out a check, and
mail it. That is why it is extremely important that you offer
some type of online payment solution for your e-business.
Accepting credit cards is the most well known way to accept
payment on the Internet. Almost everyone has a credit card and
by accepting his or hers, it makes customers' ordering process
much more convenient and time saving, not to mention it
encourages them to purchase from you. Accepting credit cards has
become a necessity to the survival of e-businesses. In order to
accept credit cards, you're going to need a merchant account. To
obtain one, just do a search on your favorite search engine. You
will be provided with a list of many different merchant account
providers to choose from. Merchant services contract with
several merchant-processing banks that will actually accept and
process your business transactions. For each transaction the
bank processes, you will be charged a discount rate, or
percentage, of the face value of the amount charged, along with
a per transaction fee (usually ranging from $0.20 to $0.30).
When you perform your transaction, and receive an authorization
number, the charged amount is immediately wire-transferred out
of your customers' credit card account into your merchant
account. The merchant bank will then discount, or deduct, the
percentage rate and per transaction fee, and wire-transfer the
balance of the charge into the business checking account of your
choice. At the end of the month, you will receive a statement,
for your records, so that you can balance your account. There
are three ways to perform transactions: 1. Terminals/Hardware 2.
Point of Sale Software 3. Real-Time (Automatic Online
Transactions) Since this article is focusing solely on online
payment solutions for your e-business, I will focus on
real-time. How real-time works is when your customer is finished
shopping and is ready to pay, they simply go to the secure order
form page where they type in their credit card information. In a
few seconds, a message appears on their screen, showing whether
their card was accepted or declined. A few days later, the money
will appear in your business checking account. With real-time,
you will be provided with an online database containing all of
your credit card transactions so you can balance your account at
the end of the month. There's a second, and probably more
unfamiliar way, to accept payment online, and that is accepting
checks by email. Until recently, service bureaus have been
responsible for check drafting, but now any business can do it.
Federal banking regulations and the Uniform Commercial Code
permit this process. How it works is: a customer submits his
checking account information and authorization to draft their
account; then the merchant takes the information and enters it
into a check printing program on their computer. From that
point, the merchant can print it on special check paper
(available from the software provider) and take the check
"draft" to their bank and deposit it as if the check was mailed
directly to them. Not only can a merchant accept checks by email
with the program; they can also accept them by phone and fax
capabilities, also. This is a great alternate solution to credit
cards as you will find some customers who aren't interested in
putting their credit card information on your site. If your
interested in this type of payment solution many merchant
account providers can help you get this solution along with a
merchant account for credit card acceptance. In summary, I would
highly recommend obtaining a merchant account for your business.
As the Internet continues to grow, more businesses come online
and more people decide to make purchases on the Web, it will
become essential that your business accept payment online
(especially credit cards) in order to survive in today's
business world. I hope this helps in your future marketing
decisions.
About the author:
David Bell is Manager, Online Marketing, at
http://www.wspromotion.com/ , a leading Search Engine
Optimization services firm and Advertising Agency.
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