NBS Agents >> Merchant Account Agent and ISO Programs

I will be creating a website to sell products within the next year and know that to have a shopping cart i will need a merchant account to process credit card transactions, can anyone tell me what is the best and most cost effective merchant account for a new eCommerce site or could i rely on pay-pal to cover all my needs. i.e will i need a merchant account if i already have a pay-pal account? Thanks in advance.

PayPal can cover all your needs until you establish the business. If you get a merchant account they can take credit cards so your customers don’t have to have Paypal to shop with you. They can also take multiple currencies, which is useful when shipping overseas.

Other merchants you might consider include Worldpay and Nochex, however PayPal is one of the most popular, and if you are planning eBay integration it is essential.

Your business bank may offer these services, but check what they charge first.

Is there a merchant credit card services that has korean services for processing credit cards? Korean people wont understand the english payment system I have placed in my site.
Please help! thank you

find and contact a korean business group and ask them

is it hard starting up a credit card and merchant service? anyone out there do this for a living? are you getting residual income? do you get turned down a lot by other businesses?

Hi, I work for a registered MSP for Visa and MasterCard (five and a half years now) and have done sales so I speak from experience.

You can make good money but it won’t happen right away. The real money comes from residual income on the merchants you acquire. Although you can make money from selling credit card terminals that will only be enough to put food on your plate while you build up your portfolio.

As you build your portfolio your monthly income will grow accordingly. On average a typical merchant will make you about $25 per month. So when you are first starting off the residual income won’t be enough to support you. But as your portfolio grows to about 100 merchants that residual income will now be $2500 a month or more which, when combined with your terminal sales, is enough to make a living. The average sales agent brings in 5 – 8 merchants per month.

Of course, your goal is to have as many merchants as possible in your portfolio and to land as many "big fish" as you can. Landing high volume merchants will make you much more money then landing start-up ecommerce websites as they tend to perform poorly. You also need to make sure you bring on enough new merchants to help offset the ones that leave you. Just like you will be stealing merchants from other sales agents, they will be doing the same to you.

A work week is never less then 40 hours if you hope to keep generating leads. You’ll be spending half of your time generating leads and the other half making your sales pitch to the leads you have generated. Competition is fierce and merchants are reluctant to switch so don’t be surprised to be turned down frequently.

I am interested in setting up this service for my auctions because it is cheaper than Paypal (although I’ll probably still offer Paypal as well) and I can sell stuff under the mature audience section, which PayPal does not allow.
Has anyone used this service for their ebay auctions?

I use Simple Payment Systems. The software is free, and the discount rate is cheaper then PayPal, no annual fees either. Oh yeah and they train you free too.Shop around before you make a choice.

I want to make a lot of money at least 10mil, so i decided to merchant. I have 1.3mil and i want to know what is the best item or wep or armour that i can merchant to make $millions$.

f2p: rune
member: barrow armour

I have been offered a job with AmericaOne credit card merchant processing services. They paint a fantastic picture of how much money you can make. I just want to know what the catch is–are there any pit falls I should be aware of???

you want to be mindful of any catches with collecting the residual. Is there a minimum # of accounts you need to board each month/year? Are they paying residual on ALL streams of income? I would be more than willing to read over the paperwork for you, as I am currently in the industry and have worked for several processors. My email is gregg@processpremier.com and phone is 866-725-8500 x 104.

Greg

Our customers rarely use credit cards as a form of payment. It’s usually a check via mail. But a few do use a Visa or MasterCard once in a blue moon. We are charged 2.75% from our bank for the the total of the credit card purchase. At the time of the credit card transaction can I add the standard percentage on top of the invoice amount? Am I legally allowed to do so? Also, am I legally allowed to markup the 2.75% we are charged on our merchant statement?

Absolutely not. Merchants must fund all card costs (setup, processing, discounts, and other fees) from their own budgets. Accepting cards for purchases is costly, as there are multiple fees involved. The business must either be able to build the cost of card acceptance into their product and service prices, or support these costs directly from their own budgeted resources.

There is no federal regulation that prohibits this as the law that prohibited a surcharge on credit card purchases expired back in 1984. However, both Visa and MasterCard allow a merchant to offer a discount to customers who pay by cash or check, but in most cases they say a merchant cannot charge more for putting it on plastic or that would be a VIOLATION OF THE MERCHANT AGREEMENT.

All card associations require that merchants accept card payments at par value, without giving preference to other methods of payment such as checks. That is, a merchant may not impose a surcharge on the purchaser when they pay by card. The only discount that may be given is for payment by cash, which should be carefully considered before being implemented in light of fairness, operational, security, and internal control issues.

Merchants must adhere to minimum acceptable business practices. In addition to the rules imposed by the card associations there are other prudent business practices that must be set up and followed by each card-accepting department / unit. Internet card acceptance has its own additional requirements. There are additional requirements mandated whenever a merchant wishes to accept card payments through its Web site. This is because of the different nature of the online medium – the speed, volume, and electronic character of these transactions require much stricter attention to security and fraud than is customary for in-person payments.

I just signed a contract yesterday for a merchant service account. I have now changed my mind and want to cancel. I have not even used their services yet and have not charged any credit cards using their service.

I think it is not a problem to cancel any service, especially if you havn’t paid anything yet. The question is what service and why…

How many payment processing options should a merchant account provider offer to the merchants? Is credit/debit card processing good enough or should other payment options like Ach processing, direct debit etc should also be provided?

Well, it is better to have all the possible payment processing methods available namely; credit card, debit card, check, electronic check, and wire transfer. If you can offer all of these, then, you can cater to all the needs of merchants. I also, suggest that you offer unlimited volume transaction so you can cater to high volume businesses.

Ideally, you’ve got to offer five.

I think in most cases protecting your intellectual copyright when selling high risk merchant products is something you will find difficult to perfect. It’s easy to copy e-books or images that you sell online. However there are simple solutions to this. Most high risk merchants, instead of selling downloadable items, would ship the e-books on CDs. Others would put watermarks on their commercial images. And digital text are put on .pdf format. Some high risk merchants would even buy software for high end encryption.