Credit card processing in most industries is a pretty standard part of exchanging money with customers. You are doing a disservice to your customers if you are not accepting Visa, Mastercard, etc. Since there are so many ways to pay for goods and services in the present day, people want convenience. As a business owner, you are going to want to conduct your research.
Customer Service
Customer service is very important, since there are many technical issues that could occur while conducting business. You want to look for a company that provides 24/7 support, as you never know when equipment and servers will go down at a critical time. A perfect example: if a business’s credit card terminal breaks down during the holiday season, they will want the problem taken care of right away. Some retail businesses rely on the holiday season to break even for the year, and this could be another catastrophic event. You want to look for an attentive and patient company. Customer service is especially important, because the credit card processing industry has complicated pricing structures.
You need someone that is very good at explaining things in a calm and patient manner. Like any other service, you would like to be treated with respect.
Fees
One of the first and most common fees you will see is the transaction percent fee. The provider will take a portion of the transaction for every sale you make. On top of that there are usually fixed monthly maintenance fees. These costs might be communicated differently by each company, but the fees need to be compared apples to apples in order put yourself in the best position.
With increasing amounts of consumers using credit cards to shop at retailers and the internet, fraud will be a major cause of chargebacks. Banks end up eating the cost of chargebacks, but in order to protect their business interests, they will pass this cost onto the merchant. One very important thing you can do is to add extra security to your credit card payment process, especially if you own an e-commerce business.
In order to maintain their bottom lines, processing companies issue a monthly minimum fee in order to maintain the account. If the merchant does not add up enough fees to meet the minimum they will have to pay the difference. This can potentially be devastating to a business with slow sales.
Early termination fees are charged to customers that close their accounts out before the contract is done. A contract is usually 1-3 years long. Pay very close attention to the fine print in the contracts, and early termination fees should be the one of the first things that you discuss with the provider.
Make sure you heavily weight price and customer service when considering the most important aspects of a merchant account. Later on, it will make life much easier, since you will not have to worry about inattentive customer service and hidden fees.
By Nate Fiori, Nate is a veteran in the merchant accounts industry having worked for North American Bancard.
North American Bancard Linkedin page.
