Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Merchant Account Providers

Merchant bank accounts are specialized bank accounts in merchant processing banks that allow businesses to accept credit, debit or other related cards, the merchant processor i.e. the bank is known as the merchant and the other party i.e. the credit card issuer represents the consumer. Now coming to the main thing; the merchant account provider, which gives the business the power to accept stuff like debit and credit card in return for offered goods and other related things mainly takes payments in three ways- in person, over the internet or over the phone…though the latter is preferred all around the world for local transactions whereas Internet in the biggest source of transactions, if payments are to be made outside the country, because of the preference of credit cards in today’s world the merchant accounts have become somewhat an essential part of today’s businesses. In the U.S, credit card processing was offered by banks that were part of the VISA or MASTERCARD. Initially credit cards were issued by and processed for merchants by banks only, but the trend has changed now, because times have changed. Now very few banks issue Cards, mostly Citibank, Bank of America and Chase rule the industry. With the passage of time banks have found out that it’s not their job and not even easy to convince small organizations to start accepting credit cards, so this job has been passed on to other smaller organizations whose job is to convince customers of start accepting credit cards, some banks, however, still continue to use their own labor force and skill to introduce their product in the market and to convince customers to use their product/ products. They have their own set guidelines and rules to hire people and train them!

Some merchants have their processing done by banks, while others prefer above mentioned organizations which are responsible for all the things that a bank does while charging a credit card… i.e. providing technical support all the times when needed.. Processing of the transactions… getting service charges calculated etc. A few well known processors in the U.S are TSYS and FIRST DATA etc. While each of the organizations that have been discussed above can be called merchant account providers, but actually by true definition they might not actually come under Merchant account providers. Actually the word’s actual meaning refers to all the companies that are actually involved by true meaning in the business and are actually maintaining a relationship with the merchant. Some really well known merchant account providers are Global Electronic technology, Credit Card processing services while others include Payment transaction systems, ITransact, Heartland Payment systems, PS Bill, Shift 4 and Via Klix! Merchant express is another really remarkable service which is offering same day approval of the account thereby it eliminates any delays and provides 24/7 support, free checking software after you sign up and even free authorize.net. They provide 6 different modes of processing Internet processing, P.O.S processing, wireless processing, and processing software, phone processing and quick books processing, they claim to have the lowest set-up cost and complete customer satisfaction and also offer a free 30 day trial. They offer only bank direct merchant accounts, hence saving their customers a lot of money.