If you have a website that sells products or services, it may be beneficial to accept online payments or accept credit card payments. You can take advantage of all the potential customers who want to use their credit or debit cards to make purchases. Worldwide, the average Visa credit card hold will spend an average of approximately $1,725 every year. The typical American Express card member spends about $7,714 each year. Additionally, according to Statistic Brain, in 2012, approximately 76 percent of U.S. college students owned credit cards.
There are several different ways to accept online payments. You can set up mobile payment terminals to accept online payments. These payment processors can be attached to your tablet or smart phone so you can accept online payments in any location. These mobile payment terminals are 100 percent secure and also comply with PCI standards that will keep customer information safe.
You can also set up payment portals via online payment companies. You can add shopping carts to your site that are furnished by these companies and are very simple to set up. Because this option is easily recognized as a trust way to accept online payments, people will feel comfortable using this service. You can also accept online payments from customers after sending them an invoice from these payment portals. You can send invoices via email, and then your customer can pay via these online transaction programs.
You can use your regular credit card merchant account to accept online payments as well. These are often considered options to a third party payment processing company. Sometimes using a merchant account is as simple as adding a shopping cart to your website and then processing the transaction manually. This is a good solution only for companies who do a small number of orders.
If you do receive many orders, you can accept online payments via your merchant account and an online payment gateway that will accept online payments for you. This will let you accept online payments in real time as the customer makes a purchase.
As you can see, there are several different methods to accept online payments. You should choose the one that you are comfortable with that can handle your sales traffic.