To maintain a competitive edge in today’s world of business, it’s a good idea to accept credit and debit cards as a form of payment. To do this, your company will need to partner with a third-party credit card processing services provider. For the most part, Visa and MasterCard are the most widely used credit cards, so you will want to obtain merchant accounts with a processing company that processes such credit and debit cards. As you go about finding a credit card processing company, there are five questions that you will need to ask.
Question 1. Does the processing company work with online shopping carts?
With so many businesses conducting business on the Internet, it only makes sense that your company should as well. Because of this, you will want to make sure that your processing company is compatible with online shopping carts.
Question 2. Are there any types of cancellation fees?
There are companies out there that won’t charge you if you have to opt out of your contract before it ends; however, if you do end up partnering with one, you’re early cancellation fee should be no more than $200.
Question 3. What fees are involved?
In addition to a per-transaction fee, you need to find out if there are any other fees that have to paid, such as an activation fee, annual fee, etc. If there are additional fees, once again, they should not exceed more than $200 a year.
Question 4. Is there an option for interchange-plus pricing?
If you discover that the answer to this question is no, you need to partner with a different processing company. Without interchange-plus pricing, it becomes difficult for you to identify all the different fees you are paying, meaning you very well may be losing out on large amounts of money that should be staying in your business bank account.
Question 5. Is customer support available?
Never do you want to partner with a processing company that offers little or no customer support. There are times that you will need such support, meaning you must make sure it will be available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.