Select the Best Credit Card Processing Service For Your Small Business – 3 Simple Essentials

It can be a daunting task to choose a credit card processing service for your company. The industry is convoluted and can be complicated to understand. Here are 3 simple things to look for when choosing a merchant account provider.

What are the Costs

Generally the most significant factor in selecting a credit card service provider is cost. The most important fees fit into two board categories Monthly Fees and Transactional Fees. The main Monthly Fees are the monthly minimum fee (in the $15 to $30 range), the monthly statement fee (in the $10 range) and in addition if you are accepting cards online you will have to pay a monthly gateway fee (around $10-20).

The major transactional fees to be concerned with are, the discount rate (a fee charged to about 2% of the purchase price), the merchant account provider transaction fee (which is around 20-30 cents a transaction) and the address verification fee which is about 5 cents each transaction.

Easy and Speedy Account Setup

Being able to quickly and easily setup the credit card account is the next most important item to consider. Take note of the Average Approval Rating when shopping around. It is a metric that measures what percentage of merchants gets approved for card processing, the higher the better.

Also, pay attention for account setup time. Most good merchant account providers can setup an account in 2 days. Make sure to determine how long it will take for the money to transfer into your account after a purchase is made. The better services can do this in 2 days.

Good Customer Service and Features

It can be very helpful to have excellent customer support from credit card service provider. Since small business owners never take a break, find out if their customer service agents are available 24 hours a day. Also find out if they have instant message, email and phone support.

If you do business from a “brick and mortar” establishment you will need to check if the credit card service provider includes and Point of Service system to swipe cards.

Although selecting a credit card processor can be a daunting task, evaluating cost, ease and speed of start up and quality of customer service can make things a lot simpler.