Does My Online Business Need A Merchant Account Analysis?

Posted on February 20, 2008
Filed Under Advisory Services |

Merchant account cost vary from one provider to another, so you must be careful when choosing the company to sign up with. Merchant account fees vary widely depending on how you process your customers’ credit cards, what products you sell, and whether you have processed cards in the past.

When reviewing the different merchant account offers, ask yourself the following questions: Will you be over paying for your credit card processing? Do you know exactly what you’re being charged for your credit card processing? Are you sure that you’re getting the lowest possible rate? Some business owners end up spending way too much on bankcard fees, simply because they never really devoted some time to understand what they are being charged for and how they can reduce those costs to minimum.

A Free Merchant Account Rate Analysis is available from nearly all processors in this industry. Most providers will give you an entirely free merchant processing rate analysis. The most common information that you will need to provide will be the following business info: business name, address, city, state, zip, email, contact name, and method of accepting credit cards (swiping or key entered). The most important thing that you will need to provide is copies of your last two to three months of merchant account statements.

The processor’s support team will manually break down your processing statement to show you precisely what you are being charged and what can be improved. Your account will be completely analyzed, and you will quickly know what your are really paying

Merchant account rates are a big factor in determining the overall effectiveness of your current provider. Comparing your rates is as simple as going to: www.yahoo.com. Simply do an internet search for popular industry terms as “merchant accounts”, or “credit card processing”. You will find hundreds of thousands of web sites dedicated to the payment processing industry. Usually you do not need to look past the first 3-4 pages of results to find sites that will actually advertise their processing charges. Be extremely leery of sites that ask for a lot of information prior to actually giving you their rate. You should really look and compare all fee categories. Even call and ask to speak with a sale representative. Tell them you want to know about any hidden fees.

Once you have done a complete merchant account analysis on the competition, compare it to your existing processing statement. Are you paying too much? If you are like most businesses, you probably are!

Tags: Advisory Services

Does My Online Business Need A Merchant Account Analysis?

Leave a Comment