# Credit card merchant accounts



## WisJim (Jan 14, 2004)

During the process of planning to open a retail storefront, I am finding that the whole credit card thing is confusing. Do any of you have info, experience, suggestions regarding credit/debit cards in a retail store? We won't be doing business over the internet (yet), but feel that in today's world we need to be able to take credit and debit cards in the store. I have been doing some research on the internet, talking to friends in business, etc., but can always use more information.

Thanks! (by the way, the business is a member-owned cooperative specializing in folk arts, including spinning, weaving, quilting, etc., and will be offering materials and supplies, classes, and an outlet for members to sell their locally produced quality products.)

Jim


----------



## paintlady (May 10, 2007)

I have used a credit card machine for years and have had really good experience with it. We got ours through a company called Merchant Warehouse. www.merchantwarehouse.com
We can take all brands of credit/debit cards. Their fees are reasonable.


----------



## WisJim (Jan 14, 2004)

Thanks. There are so many websites with this kind of info about credit card machines that I am glad to get a recommendation from someone who uses one.


----------



## byexample (Aug 28, 2009)

We have helped several of our web site clients setup merchant accounts for their sites and stores. Always had pretty good experiences and rates from Card Service International.


----------



## paintlady (May 10, 2007)

You are welcome. They really are a good company. They have different kinds of machines available also in case you need to take it on the road.


----------



## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

I used to have a merchant account, but I eventually went with a contractor to do billing.

For the most part the merchant account is straightforward. The comparison is mainly in processing fees. They all have customer support, and they all seem to be satisfactory. It's basically just dealing with a bank.

The difference for me was in the gateway. If you will be processing payments online then you will need to subscribe with a gateway, which offers a payment processing interface for the Internet. There are a number of gateways, and not all merchant accounts offer all gateways. The most popular gateway is authorize.net, which is the gateway I used. I just made sure that the merchant account provider I selected had authorize.net available. There is an extra fee for an online payment gateway.

My payments were complicated by the need to perform certain tasks upon a successful payment. That's because I ran a dialup ISP, where people expected to be able to signup 24/7 online so they could start using the service right away. That required software that interfaced with a gateway and then performed "exports" (exports is the ability to execute commands upon a successful payment). So in my case, upon a successful payment the software would create a username & password entry into the MySQL database for my RADIUS server, allowing the new subscriber to login, and also create an email account.

ISP software is prohibitively expensive. I got around that extreme expensive by getting inexpensive software intended to be used by web hosts. My reasoning was that any software that could process payments and do exports on a Linux server would suit my needs. I was correct, and configuring the software to create MySQL database entries upon a successful payment was pretty easy to do.

I think that the monthly fees for the merchant account and gateway combined were right around $40/month, and processing fees were on top of that. I try to use PayPal's gateway whenever I can now to avoid those monthly maintenance fees.


----------



## SirDude (May 30, 2010)

WisJim, Not sure what type of business you're in, but when I had my online Promo business I belonged to industry groups and would get discounts through them for things like this. I know my ex-in-law's graphic shop pays way more for their merchant account then what was being offered to me. Like the slogan says "membership has it's rewards" (FYI, not promoting any one creditor there) 

Good luck! 

SirDude


----------



## Ross (May 9, 2002)

We use Elavon which we found through Costco of all places. They covered the set up fees etc. if we went with them. Easily set up and I like their reporting statements for month end. I forget exactly how much but it depends on if the card is swiped or keyed, present or not (telephone sales). 2-3% We used our banks merchant service and it was OK too just more expensive.


----------

