In the article, “An Overview of Taking Credit Cards“, I mentioned a “gateway”. Here I will go into more details on gateways. 

A gateway is the link between your client’s e-commerce store and their credit card processor. They don’t have to have a gateway to take credit cards on-line. Instead they can manually take credit card order info from their e-commerce store and input the information themselves. However, unless they have a very low volume store, they will find the hassle of re-inputting the info and the chances of making mistakes makes the extra fees of a gateway seem reasonable. If they aren’t sure, they can start without the gateway and add it later. Continue reading →

In the article, “An Overview of Taking Credit Cards“, I mentioned a “Merchant Account” and a “Credit Card Processor”. Here I will go into more details on these.

Definitions

A Merchant Account is what your client needs in order to accept credit cards from their customers.  A Merchant Account is needed to take credit cards for either an on-line store or a physical store location (known as a brick-and-mortar store). The alternative is for your client to take credit cards through a third-party supplier such as PayPal. Continue reading →

When I started learning about e-commerce, all the terms were confusing and blended together. To help you, here are some basics. I’ve split this into the two main services your client will need from you and I linked them to separate articles to help clarify the process for you:

• They will need a “Merchant Account” to process* credit cards.
• They will need a “Gateway” to interface your shopping cart with their merchant account. Continue reading →