Purchasing products online entails many steps. If you are an online business owner you should have a merchant service account to process the credit card information given by your customers. When a client buys your product with a credit card online, the information is sent through a couple of steps before it enters your bank account.

Starting off, you should secure the server with certification. When your client puts in their credit card information, it is sent in unencrypted text form to the server hosting the website. To avoid data interception you should use SSL encryption making sure no illegal deciphering can occur. Then, your customers need to fill out an order form on your secured server. Afterward the information is sent through a gateway. This is the path where the authorization, processing, and management of the merchant services occur. It is the mechanism relocating your client’s important information to the processor so you can get receive the payment. An important advantage to your online business would be adding a shopping cart. A shopping cart is software allowing your small business to have an e-commerce store where purchases are automatically calculated for you. It is important to make sure the gateway works well with the shopping cart.

Open a merchant service account to make the entire process easier for you. You can have a secure server with guarantee, an order form, shopping cart and a gateway, but all this cannot take place without making a merchant account. The merchant account allows access to a processor able to authorize, capture, and settle credit card transactions. All in all, it is imperative to open a merchant account for your online business. Merchant accounts do make credit card processing an easy task.