When you sell online products or services, you need to be able to accept payments. You, as an online merchant, can accept credit cards from your customers. Credit cards ensure instantaneous electronic payment gets credited to your merchant accounts from credit-worthy customers. A merchant account allows customers to pay you immediately online and reduces customers’ default risk for you, the merchant.
What is a Merchant Account?
What is a merchant account? As stated in Wikipedia, “A merchant account is a type of bank account that allows businesses to accept payments by payment cards, typically debit or credit cards.”
Merchant service companies, like FDIS, are connected with the major credit card issuers like Visa, Mastercard, AMEX and others. A merchant, such as yourself, applies for an account with these provider companies to have the ability to accept credit card payments (online or brick and mortar).
Applying merchants are viewed from the angles of integrity of business, verifying one that it is not a fraud or fly-by-night operator, volume of business and outstanding complaints against the merchant website.
In case there are questionable practices reported against any merchant then these issuers can terminate its merchant account. The route of credit card issuing establishments is not simple. They are essentially providing two important things to a credit card. One is the brand name and second is the credit worthiness that is associated with such a brand image. Credit cards are, in fact, issued by a variety of banks and financial institutions worldwide, such as FDIS, with a variety of attractive packages and associated benefits. However, all cards tend to link their issuance to any of the above major issuer only.
Credit cards are a better means of payment across the internet as many other facilitating payment mechanisms find it difficult to negotiate cross border transactions. For instance, PayPal, a popular payment alternative to credit cards, restricts American PayPal account holders from accepting payments for physical delivery of goods in, say, Asia. Where the very same transaction can be easily executed using any of the credit cards that is valid for global transactions.
Credit cards also help your customers. They help can maintain an audit trail and proof of the product ordered. In fact, a credit card payment can be taken as a stepping stone of a created liability on the merchant to deliver the product as per the agreed terms of delivery. Credit cards also help merchants to easily return monies paid to them, in case they run out of stock or the goods delivered are returned for any defects.
FDIS offers a way for you to accept credit cards online or in your brick and mortar business. We help you navigate your way to fully getting your merchant account. Complete an application today to get started!