A merchant account is a kind of bank account that businesses use, and that will enable them to accept payments by debit and credit card.
This is a highly important thing for many businesses and in many cases can make the difference between the company making sales or not.
If you think of something like a shop or a food vendors then they will largely be making their sales on an opportunistic basis - selling to people who happen to be walking past at the time or who see something they like in the window.
If you think how often such people don't have money on them (do you carry cash on you at all times?) then those people will only turn into sales if you have a merchant account.
At the same time though for any office based business this allows you to provide a better service by making things more convenient for your clients.
Getting a good merchant account that offers good rates, a great service and as many extra benefits as possible is a highly important consideration for any business.
However this takes a certain amount of time and thought and finding the best merchant account possible is something that you need to invest a little bit of thought into to reap the rewards - though you should find that it is more than worth it.
Here we will look into the factors and considerations that you need bear in mind while picking out that perfect merchant account for you.
Firstly recognise that there are four different kinds of pricing structures principally used by these accounts.
These are: interchange plus, tiered, enhanced recover reduced and flat rate.
These last two are more straight forwards but it's important to think about what will be the cheapest in terms of the way that you use it.
Before you look into your merchant account you should also list down everything that you require for it and make sure you know the fees and rates charged for services and use financial modeling to see which plan is best suited to your way of doing business.
You don't want to be having to charge your customers for use of their card or this will put them off making a purchase and in some cases you might find that there are minimum charges etc.
This might not be a problem for instance if you are running a restaurant where everything you sell is going to be above that price, but if you run a convenience store then it could mean putting people off of making small purchases of mints etc.
Choose the price plan that best suits you and look at how the fees vary between these companies - search online or call around and find which company offers the best deal.
You should also look for any other terms and conditions while looking over the documentation and as with any account you should make sure to really go over the terms with a fine comb.