To increase sales on your website, you must accept credit cards. To process credit cards, you could apply for a merchant account through your bank or other financial institution.

Sometimes, though, you would be further ahead to use services of a credit card processor. This is especially true when you are first starting out and have more limited resources. In this way, you may process credit card transactions without high front-end costs and requirements of a merchant account.

Here, then, are just a few ways of accepting credit cards without a merchant account. I personally use all of these vendors and can recommend them wholeheartedly.

1. Clickbank

If your product is downloadable (such as electronic books or software), you might consider ClickBank.com . For a $49.95 initial fee, you can process credit cards and on-line cheques for $1.00 per transaction plus 7.5% of sales.

You receive additional exposure through free listing on their website and through search facilities of other websites, such as CBMall.com .

As an added bonus, you have your own built-in affiliate program. You decide what commission (from 1% to 75%) you would like to pay your affiliates.

2. PayPal

Overview

As criminals become more sophisticated in their attempts to commit online credit card fraud, new technologies are required to discourage and detect fraud before it occurs. Risk of fraud is a potential barrier to online purchases. It can also be costly to merchants, since they must bear costs of successfully disputed purchases. In addition, too many “charge-backs” can cause merchants to have their merchant account status downgraded or revoked, thereby negatively impacting their business. A number of technologies are emerging to both secure sensitive data and reduce amount of successful fraud at various stages of order cycle.

Input-Based Methods

Several technologies exist that verify data input by purchasers at time an order is placed on a merchant’s website.

AVS (Address Verification Service) matches street number and zip code that is entered by a purchaser with address information on file with credit card companies. A message is then sent back to payment gateway indicating degree to which address information matches (e.g. “Address matches, zip code does not”). Based on AVS settings or "filters" merchant has set within payment gateway, merchant can then make a decision about how they wish to proceed with transaction when there are mismatches. One key drawback to AVS processing is that checking occurs only after a valid authorization is returned. This means that there will be a hold on customer’s account for amount of transaction, even though merchant may decide to decline based upon AVS results. This method is widely used, however.

EasyPay123’s AVS tool (powered by Skipjack Transaction Network) enables merchants to control how closely numeric address information must match in order for transaction to be allowed to settle.

Another technology supported by credit card companies is called CVV2 (Card Verification Value) by VISA, and CVC2/CID by MasterCard and AMEX respectively. These technologies use codes that are embossed on back or front of VISA, MasterCard and AMEX cards. CVV2 and its counterparts require a card holder to enter codes at transaction time to verify that they are in physical possession of card. Since these values are not stored in transaction databases with other credit card information, hackers cannot gain access to them if they somehow acquire credit card numbers from a database. During authorization process, card issuing bank verifies CVV2 value that was entered with credit card number.

Communication-Based Methods

The primary technology for securing transactions as they are transmitted over Internet is Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). SSL “encrypts” confidential data (i.e. converts it into an unreadable form) to ensure that unauthorized individuals are not able to view or modify it as it is being passed between customer, merchant’s website and EasyPay123. The merchant’s order form must be secured with a “digital certificate” to establish an SSL connection with customer. Customers can be confident that their payment session is secured using SSL when they see “closed lock” at bottom of their browser.