Accepting Credit Cards: Getting A Merchant Account

Today's Web developer needs to have a thorough knowledge of how to build commerce-enabled Web sites. One of the most mysterious areas, for clients and Web shops alike, is the process of setting up a Web-enabled credit card merchant account. The gold rush of e-commerce has spawned hordes of pick-and-shovel peddlers. If you search for information on credit cards, you'll find page after page of outfits, all offering to get your credit card scene together pronto and cheapo. All of them try to make the process of getting a merchant account sound extremely difficult and complicated (if you buy their product, of course, it becomes easy). I am sorry to say that not a few of these outfits are shaky, shady, or simply scams. What do you really need to get credit card transactions going on a site, and how do you find a reputable bank that's knowledgeable about the Internet?

I won't begin this article by expounding the virtues of credit cards, because that would sound too much like the blobs of Spam that appear in your mailbox every day. All I'll say is that the first sentence or two (and little more) of those Spamograms is usually correct - if you want to do business online, you do need to accept credit cards. Forget about "virtual cash" and "smart cards." Credit cards are here now, and are rapidly becoming the payment method of choice whenever possible. Most or all of the retail business transacted over the Web is done with credit cards.

You can also forget the scare stories you've heard about credit card security risks. The whole rigmarole about hackers sniffing packets and harvesting your credit card numbers made great press, and sold a tremendous number of magazines about a year ago, but it was mostly pretty far-fetched stuff, and it's old news now. If I really must debunk this bugaboo (my regular readers know how I hate debunking bugaboos), let's briefly revisit three facts:

   1. Most credit card companies limit your liability in case of credit card theft to a small amount, perhaps $50 - 100, so that's the most at stake even in the worst-case scenario, which is that the first documented Internet credit card rip-off in history just happens to happen to you.

   2. For obvious reasons, credit card numbers are much more likely to be stolen when you use your card in a restaurant or over the phone than when you use it over the Web.

   3. By taking a few simple precautions, you, the Web site owner, can make it difficult enough to breach your security that it simply wouldn't be worth anyone's time to make the attempt. If somebody wants to run a credit card rip-off, there are far easier ways to do it than hacking into a site that has taken basic security precautions.

Having said all that, the fact remains that perceptions are often more important than facts, and the majority of people out there are probably still convinced that using credit cards over the Web is extremely risky. It's very important for you to make sure that your online sales system is as secure as practical, and to convince your site visitors of this fact.