Online Canadian businesses are booming. Last year 76% of Canadian shopped online and a quarter of those that shopped online were considered frequent shoppers (source). As a business owner, you need to have an online presence, or your business will likely be losing out on a considerable amount of business and market share. Depending on your industry you may be selling services or products that can all be purchased or paid for online. However, being able to accept online transactions is not as easy, risk-free or affordable as one may think. Unlike brick and mortar stores, online purchases are made with debit or credit cards which can come with several drawbacks.
To accept credit cards online, you need to have a merchant account and a payment gateway. A merchant account is a type of business bank account that enables you to accept credit cards. An online payment gateway enables your e-commerce website to process credit or debit card transactions.
There are countless different providers and services that either involves business owners signing up for merchant accounts and payment gateway separately or as an all in one solution. Many of these companies try to sell customers on how fast and easy the sign-up process is. However unsuspecting business owners may not realize the extremely high processing rates these companies charge or the fine print they may include such as limited amount of tranactions per month or high transaction fees. These hidden fees can make it nearly impossible to make a profit through online sales. Besides for potentially profit killing fees some merchant providers charge to accept online payments; business owners also face new and costly online risks like chargebacks and online credit card fraud that can cost business owners thousands of dollars a year.
Therefore you need to choose a credit card processor that can offer you virtual and eCommerce solutions that enable you to process transactions online while leading the industry in fraud screening tools and PCIT Data Security. Affordability while providing advanced online security features is the key to keeping your company profitable while mitigating potentially catastrophic fraud based risks.
#eccomercesolutions #creditcardmerchantservices #onlinecreditcardprocessing #paymentgatewaycanada