Saturday, November 21, 2009

3 Things to Consider When Selecting a Credit Card Processing Service

By Alexander C. Hemenway

Figuring out the best credit card service provider for your company is no small feat. There are many service options, fees and jargon making it difficult to understand what the most important factors are. This article addresses the topic in order focus on the most important factors.

The Critical Costs

Cost is probably the most important factor when selecting a processing company. There are 2 main types of fees, Transactional Fees and Monthly Fees. In terms of monthly fees, pay attention for the monthly statement fee (around $10), monthly minimum fee(between $15-30), and if you are doing credit card processing over the internet the monthly payment gateway fee (between $10-$20).

Important transactional fees to consider are the discount rate fee (in the 2% range) and the account provider transaction fee (about 20-30 each transaction) and the address verification fee (5 cents each time).

Easy and Speedy Account Setup

Being able to quickly and easily setup the credit card account is the next most important item to consider. Take note of the Average Approval Rating when shopping around. It is a metric that measures what percentage of merchants gets approved for credit card processing, the higher the better.

Since in business, time is money, be sure to evaluate the setup time. A good provider can setup an account in 2 days. In addition enquire about the amount of time it takes from purchase for funds to be transferred into your account, again, 2 days is optimal.

Customer Service and Features

It can be very helpful to have excellent customer support from credit card service provider. Since small business owners never take a break, find out if their customer service agents are available 24 hours a day. Also find out if they have instant message, email and phone support.

If you are physically swiping credit cards you will want to make sure that the merchant account provider has access to a good selection of Point of Service (POS) machines.

Although selecting a credit card processor can be a daunting task, evaluating cost, ease and speed of start up and quality of customer service can make things a lot simpler. - 16890

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