Term:
Merchant Account
Acronym:
-
Definition:
Merchant accounts allow eCommerce businesses to take credit cards as a form of payment for goods or services. Typically merchant accounts for online business charge a higher fee than accounts for physical stores. Most charge a setup fee, a monthly fee and a per transaction fee.Many merchant accounts allow the webmaster to make transactions programmatically through an API. This allows the website to do real time transactions. In most cases this requires a skilled programmer to setup.
Businesses like PayPal offer ways for webmasters to make transactions with very little programming knowledge, with the tradeoff being that the client leaves the webmasters site for the transaction and is then returned to the website after the transaction is completed.
Caution needs to be taken when the making the decision which merchant account to choose. It is good to read the fine print very carefully on how disputes, charge backs to the account and international charges are handled.
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