How To Find the Best Merchant Account For Your Business

Written by Diane Hughes


What a great idea! Start accepting credit cards and watch your profits soar. Nothing could be simpler. Or so you thought until you began researching merchant accounts. It can all get extremely confusing. There is an easy way to findrepparttar best deal that suits your business. You'll be able to compare apples to apples and have a clear picture of whatrepparttar 104345 merchant account will cost you.

Let's take a look at some ofrepparttar 104346 phrases you'll encounter (in layman's terms) when you begin to search for a merchant account.

--- Merchant Account Provider - The company who arranges for your payment hardware or software and your ability to accept credit cards.

--- Nova - The company who processesrepparttar 104347 credit card transactions and forwards them torepparttar 104348 appropriate credit card company for payment (Visa, MasterCard, American Express, etc.)

--- Set Up Fee - The one-time amountrepparttar 104349 merchant account provider charges to set up your company in their system. For this example, we'll use a set up fee of $65.00.

--- Discount Fee -One amount (there are others) that Nova andrepparttar 104350 merchant account provider deduct from each sale as a portion of their payment for your merchant account. We'll use a discount fee of 2.25%.

--- Per Transaction Fee - This is a second amount thatrepparttar 104351 two companies subtract from each transaction as a portion of their payment. For our example, we'll pick a per transaction fee of $.35.

--- Terminal or Gateway Fee - Whether you have a real terminal or a virtual gateway viarepparttar 104352 Internet, you will be assessed monthly charges to coverrepparttar 104353 use of that service. Let's say $10.00 for our example.

--- Statement Fee - The fee for your merchant account provider to send an itemized statement each month. An average amount we can use is $15.00.

--- Annual Fee - An annual fee just for having your merchant account. Forrepparttar 104354 annual fee example, we'll choose $35.00.

I know what you're thinking! But don't give up before you start. Remember, I'm going to show you a way to decipher all this information.

Choose a number -- any number. This will berepparttar 104355 total number of transactions you think you might conduct duringrepparttar 104356 course of a year. For our example, we'll use 100. Next, choose an average transaction amount for your product or services. We'll say $175.00 for now. Finally, we'll calculate a year's worth of charges by usingrepparttar 104357 amounts above and withinrepparttar 104358 definitions.

A Hard Lesson Learned....

Written by Diane Hughes


Are you like me? I like to handle things on my own so I don't even THINK about incorporating help with anything I am working on ... especially my business as a whole.

Well, I learned something new recently. It was a HORRIBLE experience that actually turned out forrepparttar better. Let me tell you my story:

I have a team of about 2000 associates. Since all my sites are hosted at Host4Profit except forrepparttar 104344 site that their websites are hosted on, I decided to transfer everything over. Well, I have transferred many sites before so I knew how it worked. I knew I would get access to Host4Profit before transferring with my registrar and that all I had to do was upload everything over torepparttar 104345 new host while my old host was still active. This would make a seamless transfer. No one would ever know anything happened ...

To make a long story short, it didn't turn out to be as seamless as I hoped and things were a little messed up for about a day. Needless to say, I received TONS of emails!

"What happened?!" "Where did you go?!" "Give me my money back!" "Hello? Are you there?"

Well, I couldn't ANSWER these emails because I was busy gettingrepparttar 104346 transfer problem fixed. This caused most of them to email me a SECOND time, therefore doublingrepparttar 104347 amount of emails sitting in my email box! Stress was building as I worked to getrepparttar 104348 problem fixed ....

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