"How to Accept Credit Cards"

What is normally required?

To accept credit cards on your site, there are three things that are generally required:

1. A merchant account - The real story

A merchant account is used for depositing a customer's funds from their credit card/bank account into your checking account. There are various fees involved in this process. Visa and MasterCard have their fees, the banks involved have their fees and the processors have their fees. A merchant account provider combines all of these fees into one package. On an internet based business, fees are generally higher because of the increased risk of fraud when you do not physically see the person charging their credit card and usually do not have their signature. Usually, the fees are a percentage of your transaction called a discount rate (2.4%-5% or more), plus a per-transaction fee (usually 25-50 cents). There are often extra hidden fees for overseas credit cards, business credit cards, and unverified addresses (marginal to 1.5% or more). There is also a monthly billing fee (usually $10-$20) and a gateway fee (usually $10-$20) attached to many merchant accounts. If you already have a merchant account for your business and you are venturing online, you will need to contact your bank to be sure that the merchant account is set up for accepting internet transactions.

2. A terminal for validating and processing credit cards.

Unless you have the type of merchant account that only does 'real-time' internet gateway processing, a terminal will be necessary for validation of your customer's credit cards. You have probably seen them at your local supermarkets. In those types of businesses, you or the sales clerk swipes your card and the machine dials up a processor, verifies your card is legitimate, gives an approval number, and prints out a sales slip for you to sign. On the internet, the most popular choice is a "virtual terminal" that processes orders via the internet. Sometimes, a virtual terminal will be included with a merchant account.

3. A secure shopping cart or order page for organizing your items and facilitating online purchasing.

A secure server (internetsecuresite.com) is included in most of our web hosting packages. The type of shopping cart you will need depends much on the variety and type of products you are selling. If you are selling a low variety of products, you will not usually need a highly advanced shopping cart to do the job. Wyenet offers several different kinds of free shopping carts included as part of our normal packages. These are generally designed for a lower variety of products (1 to 50 or so depending on your needs). For bigger stores, a more advanced shopping cart is highly recommended. Miva Merchant is generally the most popular choice for advanced shopping systems. You can organize your store into various categories and include a "add to cart" button next to any items a visitor may be interested in. They can then "proceed to checkout" where shipping and tax (if any) can be automatically added to the total. Miva also works with many types of virtual terminal payment systems so that credit card processing can be done in "real time" rather than manually. Wyenet offers Miva Merchant for $29.95 per month or as part of the Miva Package found here. A demo of this shopping cart can be found here.

Which solution is right for you? Combine either of the following 2 plans with one of our web hosting packages and you will have a complete e-business solution. 

Established or higher volume companies - Premium Plan

If your web site is already well traveled and/or you anticipate having a higher level of volume, it would be less expensive to go with the Premium plan. Wyenet has teamed up with Total Merchant Services and Authorize.Net to provide you with these special discounted rates:

Setup cost: $129
Discount Rate: 2.29% for Visa/MasterCard!
Billing Fee: $10
Gateway Fee: $10
Per-Transaction Fee: $ .30
Virtual Terminal (Internet based): Included
Real-time Credit Card processing: Included
$25 minimum sales volume per month to avoid $25 fee.
Miva Merchant Compatible
Compatible with 140+ other shopping carts
Technical Support Included
E-Check capability with no setup fee. Accept checks online.
Compatible with all of our hosting plans
Easy three step process to sign up

The above pricing is the best we have seen anywhere for this type of service. Most merchant companies will charge you to lease their terminal (usually $20-$40 per month) or to purchase it outright at $500 or more. With this solution, your total monthly cost would only be $20 along with your discount and per-transaction fees (provided you have at least $25 in sales that month). We are not just offering this package because of great pricing. After having used Total Merchant Services for 18 months, we felt confident enough to offer their services to our customers! 

Startup companies - Startup Plan

If you are just getting started on an internet business and do not have a lot of funds available to acquire a merchant account, a terminal and advanced shopping cart, you may be interested in using the "all-in-one solution". Wyenet has teamed up with 2checkout.com to provide you with a merchant account, terminal and shopping cart in one package with no monthly fees! With 2checkout.com, you don't actually have a merchant account. 2checkout.com uses their own merchant account and sends you a payment twice a month. Their fees are very reasonable. We highly recommend them for startup businesses with uncertain volume projections.