You can sell goods and services on the internet.

Any merchant who wants to accept credit cards, must have a merchant account with a bank or financial institution. For Internet commerce and electronic payment where the card is not present, you must setup an Internet merchant account.

In the US banks can issue several type of credit cards. Discount rates and sign up terms vary from bank to bank. We recommend you research their terms and policies to find which bank best fits with your business plans. It is a good idea to get familiar with particular issues surrounding internet merchant accounts before approaching a bank. These are application fees, discount rates and security deposits, "charge backs" and fraud.

In Canada you need to have one merchant account for each type of credit card you want to accept. You will need three merchant accounts from three different institutions, if you want to accept Visa, MasterCard and American express.  

If you plan to sell your products and services over the Internet you need to accept credit cards. You instantly get access to millions of new customers. According to surveys  internet commerce is increasing by a rate of %60 per year. With a Credit Card a customer can place an order at your web site 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. You can process it instantly or during your normal operating hours. Regardless of when and how you process it you get instant approval and the goods or services could be sent to the customer. 
There are two options:  

• Off Line Terminal Processing and Verification Acceptance.
• "Real Time" On Line Processing and Verification acceptance. 

You need two things to accept credit cards. First a merchant account with a bank or processing organization, and second, a software, terminal, or simply a telephone to transmit the information to processing center.( i.e. your bank). You may select one of the choices based on what you sell, how much you sell, your resources and staff and your budget.

There are also a couple of online real-time credit card processing gateways. However credit card processing is not done over the internet.

There are many ways to transmit the information to your bank. But basically there are three ways:

1- A processing software that is configured with your merchant account number and terminal ID ( must be registered with your bank) and a dial up configuration for accessing the bank. The information are encrypted, however since you are not using a public media like internet, the security is not a big issue.

2- Online gateway is offered by a couple of companies. Customer sends the credit card information through a secured server directly to the processing gateway, it will be transmitted to the bank by the real time processing system and after obtaining an approval or decline a message will be sent back to the customer at the site where originally purchase entered.

3- Telephone Processing is an alternative for the merchants that do not have a high volume of transactions per months. They call the processing center, usually a toll free number and either punch in the credit card information or talk to a bank customer service and get an approval and an authorization number. This way they can avoid the high monthly cost and transaction fees that are involved in the first two methods. You have to spend more time and sometimes the cost per transaction will be higher. This solution works well for the merchants with low monthly volume.

In terms of security, all of the three ways are almost the same. The security issue arises from some other sources. If you are using a real-time gateway, your bank has already evaluated and approved it. You do not worry about how they send the information that they capture from your site to the bank Whether you use your own POS terminal, telephone or real-time gateway, the fraud is possible and you are the only person who is responsible. The system's ability to detect and prevent fraud are very good but there is no guarantee. Internet businesses are considered risky because the card is not swiped, neither the signature verified, when a purchase is done.

In most Off Line transactions the credit card information is entered on an On Line order form. Off Line transactions can be sent secured or unsecured depending on the hosts server. We strongly recommend a secure server. The information is sent to an email or a data base file where it is retrieved and processed by a terminal or software program that resides outside of the Internet. Another method is for your customer to fax you his credit card number. Once the information is received you punch it in the terminal or software for the electronic approval.

In "Real Time" On Line processing you do not have to have your own terminal or software. Transactions are processed On Line fully Secured and in "Real Time." "Real Time" means to get nearly instant credit card approval. From your point of view this process can be fully automated, however the real processing of the credit card is done out of the internet.

FastWebServer provides: MivaMerchant 4.x online storefront, Verisign PayFlow Pro and PayFlow Link Payment Gateways, Authorize.net Payment Gateway, and a number of secure transaction services. Check out our e commerce page for details.