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Whether you close your sales over the internet or in stores or in a mixture of both, you may soon start considering the use of credit card processing in order to help your customers pay you faster.

The most difficult part may not be debating whether or not to use credit card processing, but actually finding and choosing the best merchant provider of accounting. This decision bares more impact in your bottom line that the first one.

Although having credit card processing may be fairly easy, merchant accounts provide different services. Some of them may have different fees, rates and limits, and especially customer service. It is up to you to make up a mix of services and rates that benefits you and your customer the most.

Here you will find the process and some especial considerations that will allow you to find the most appropriate solution.

How does credit card processing actually work? you may be wondering. Without too many details, this is what usually happens:

The software captures the information regarding the customer and the sale and it will later transmit it to the acquisition bank.

An authorization request is sent to the acquisition bank from the bank that issued the card. When the latter accepts, the transaction has to be resent for approval.

The credit card processing software will allow you to review the transaction and send a confirmation to the acquiring bank.

The next step is receiving the funds from the financial institution that issued the card to the customer.

The funds are then transferred from the customers’ account to your business account.

And this is how credit card processing works. Now, it is needless to say all parties involved in this process have a cost advantage. Here are the primary fees to consider:

The Discount rate is a percentage that the seller will have to pay on every sale. Finally, there is what they call a Rate of return that is a percentage that is kept in a reserve increased monthly in case of fraudulent transactions.