In an economy where paper money and checks are being utilized less and less and plastic is becoming the standard it is very important that your ecommerce site has the ability to accept credit cards or you will be losing out on a huge number of customers.
It used to be that the only way to accept credit cards on your own website was through having a merchant account. Now there are a large number of alternatives to having a merchant account that make setting up credit card functionality a much easier process. One of the most widely used and easiest alternatives to start using is Paypal.
Paypal will allow you to accept credit cards right on your site and only takes a matter of minutes to set up. However all of this ease of use comes at a price. Paypal is one of the most expensive methods of accepting credit cards and is not recommended for any serious retailers who have a high volume of traffic to process. There is another service known as payflow that is offered by the company Verisign. This service has a flat monthly rate and a cheaper per sale rate than Paypal does. Payflow is a good service to use if you plan on a large number of transactions in a month.
Although alternative methods to merchant accounts exist, merchant accounts still remain the best option for any real serious online retailers. They have the best prices with really high volume and the offer the most options.
In the end it doesn’t matter what service you use to get credit card processing on your site, just as long as you do so. You will make back any money lost on the service with the improved sales in no time.