Articles: Merchant Account

Before understanding what is a merchant account it is useful to understand what is the meaning of e-commerce and what are the main components of an automated e-commerce system.

E-Commerce can be summarised as the ability to accept automatic online transactions at your website through credit card, debit card or internet check acceptance and processing.

Generally an e-commerce system includes several components that help you to automatise your business. For sure you will need:

1. Shopping cart software

Typically is what allows your customers to choose the items on your site and put them in a virtual cart, then before they exit your site they can confirm the order and pay for items selected.

2. Secure server

Without a secure server your e-commerce system is not complete and practically 0% of your customers will feel confident to buy from you. Infact only a secure server is what gives the complete guarantee to your customers that to buy from you is 100% safe and they have not to worry about fraud.

3. Gateway software

This is the key element of a reliable e-commerce package. Basically the gateway software processes in real-time your customers' credit cards after they have filled out the order form or bought via the shopping cart software, then gets the approval, transfer the money into your bank account and confirms the operation through e-mail to your customers and to you.

So a merchant account can be defined as a commercial bank account established by contractual agreement in order to enable your business to accept credit card payments from your customers.

There are many providers on the Net but few are able to provide you with a turnkey merchant account / e-commerce package.