By Paul Lang, Editor, Sell It!
December 15th, 1999

See Also   How to Build a Web Store for FREE   How to choose mailing list management software   How to Grow Your Web Business   How to Accept Credit Cards without a Merchant Account   How To Develop Online Products That Sell   How to Change Your Web Hosting Service (ISP)   How to Deal with Disgruntled Customers   How to Get Top Search Engine Positioning   How to Beat Credit Card Fraud   How to Design an Affiliate Program   How to Accept Credit Card Payments   How to Choose a Shopping Cart

I have had the pleasure of being involved with Web based e-commerce for over three years now, and as I'm sure you can imagine I have seen many changes during this time. For example, not so long ago Web commerce was such a novelty that consumers were willing to put up with a fair amount of inconvenience when placing an online order just because the whole experience was such a novelty.

This is definitely no longer true: consumers expect a slick ordering and payment system. As a result, in order to build a successful Web based business these days you need to be able to accept credit card payments, and preferably be able to process transactions in real-time. (See How to Accept Credit Cards Online).

On the surface, this does not appear to be a major challenge: after all, the Web is full of ads for merchant accounts. And sifting through my daily deluge of spam mail, I can't help but noting that a large proportion of it seems to be for merchant accounts, most guaranteeing acceptance.

There is no doubt that getting a credit card merchant account for an Internet only business is much easier than it used to be. However, new small businesses with no credit history, older businesses with a poor credit history and foreign-based businesses can still struggle to get that vital merchant account.

In addition, even those businesses that do qualify for a merchant account can find the costs to be prohibitive: application fees, set-up costs, terminal or software leasing costs, transaction costs, statement costs, monthly fee minimums etc., can all quickly mount up.

Fortunately, there is a solution to these problems: there are now a growing number of third party services that allow Web merchants to accept credit card payments on their Web site without the need of a merchant account. On top of this, many of these services come complete with valuable additional features, for example a built-in shopping cart, 24x7 customer service, and the ability to accept other forms of online payment.

Here is a list of some of the main players in this field together with a summary of the services they provide.

Important: the information in these tables is current at the time of writing. It is, of course, subject to change and you should contact the service provider to check that these details are still accurate.

Paybyweb

ibill

Kagi

ClickBank

CCNow

DigiBuy

NetBanx