To accept credit card online is easy for the U.S. or Canadian webmasters. Just apply for an internet merchant account through a credit card processing company, then you will be able to sell your products or service online. This process can take as little as 5 minutes to a week to complete.
Different companies have different approval policy, setup fee, and processing fee. Some companies a lot of money (from $200 to $900) to set up an account, the other offers free setup. For the processing fee, it typically ranges from 3%+$0.3 to 15% + $1. Therefore, in choosing a credit card processor, you will have to make some calculation if it is economical.
The trap is that some so called “credit card processing company” in fact is an agent itself. It will charge you a lot of money to setup. These companies never expect to make money through processing orders, but the application fee only. The bad news is that they are expertise in marketing their websites. In most cases, when you query “credit card processing” or related words, the search engine lists their result first.
Our suggestion is to choose a company that does not or only charge a small amount of setup fee. And you can start quickly. Please note that in the first several months, you can only get paid 60% to 70% of your total sales because there is a reserve that credit card processors will hold.
For international merchants, there is no much choice. Most credit card processing companies do not accept international clients. Here are some of the processors that you can apply if you live outside United States.
1. 2Checkout.com: requires a setup fee of $49. 100% approved.
2. Paypal.com: no setup fee. 100% approved.
3. Yaskifo.com: no setup fee. 100% approved.
4. ikobo.com: no setup fee. 100% approved.
5. worldpay.com: about $300 setup fee.