How hard is it to get a Merchant Account?

[Mpress]

Hello everyone,
I own a online business where I use PayPal to accept payments. I would like to start another business, but the name on the associated with the paypal account would probably get my customers confused.

So I'm looking at either using 2checkout for my new business venture, or getting my own merchant account if it isn't that difficult to get one. I was thinking about Charge.com. I know that I'd need to get an SSL certificate, and i would just hire a programer to connect my shopping cart with Authorize.net. But does charge.com look for certain things before they accept you, or do they just practically hand out merchant accounts to anyone. Thanks for your answers in advance.

-Mike

[Troy]

Check out the Advantage package that netfirms.com has to offer. 119 bucks per year, and an eCommerce system already to accept and proccess credit cards. I am just getting around to looking at Mine, and I am inpressed!

[Lynn Terry]

[ElevatingYourBusiness]

If you want to use paypal, why not open another account with your other name? I've been using 2checkout and am looking for another company.

[ElevatingYourBusiness]

PS If you have a Costco or SamsClub account, check there, too.

[Lynn Terry]

[Todd Sumrall]

How hard? It really depends on a few things that determine the amount risk-of-loss your account could bring the processor.

The factors looked at that are universal are:

1- personal credit history
2- product/service sold
3- how sold e.g. retail, mail, phone, internet, mobile, home based
4- fulfillment time
6- size of average transaction
7- amount of requested monthly processing volume
9- country of residence
10 - prior processing history
11- product ownership prior to sale. merchant or other. For example, do you want to be a 3rd party processor like paypal for example, or are you selling goods/services with cost-of-goods COGS associated with it? Note, drop shipping has COGs
12- Fulfillment procedure for credit card processing and/or shipping/delivery. Merchant or fulfillment house? Drop shipper?

Other factors that may influence decisions:

1- phone lines (land line vs.. wireless)
2- policies such as refund and return
3- presentation e.g. website name same as business name, or something different
4- for recurring billing - how far in advance are you taking payments? monthly, annually, every two years?
5- checking account for deposits, personal or business
6- product/service claims
7- levels of payouts for any type of affiliate program

Typically a good rep can help you with these areas. They know what is required to get approved. Some companies want really good credit histories, some don't care as long as you are not in bankruptcy. Some have auto approval policies if other things check out such as ticket size and product sold etc.

As far as hiring programmers to configure your gateway and shopping cart, that may not be necessary if your cart isn't custom. Authorize.net works with most off-the-shelf carts and there isn't any programming involved to get it to work. Instructions vary from cart to cart, but typically consist of your username and password for the gateway be put into the cart somewhere, and they probably simply have a module with a form for this. Just type it in.

All in all, for about 80% of US merchants, it is not very hard to get a merchant account. The right rep can make it easy for merchants to both establish one and avoid pitfalls that will appear down the road.

[avrr]