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Sell Product Online > Free Merchant Account
Free Merchant AccountDoes a free merchant account exist?No, a free merchant account does not exist. If you have spent your time online trying to find a merchant account for free, you are wasting your time. If you have found a free merchant account please let us know because we have never heard of one. The reason there is not a free merchant account is in order to accept credit cards you have to pay what is called a discount rate on each purchase you make. This discount rate is chosen by the credit card companies and then the merchant account providers will add a little on top of the base discount rate so they can keep a little for themselves. They then pass this new discount rate onto you with other rates and fees. Searching for a free merchant account will provide you with a lot of links to companies offering free merchant account setup. This is usually as close as you will get to a free merchant account. Alternatives to a normal merchant account? Now why I say there is no such thing as a free merchant account (if you can prove me wrong please email me) there are alternatives to the normal merchant accounts you get from banks or from merchant account providers. These alternatives are mainly for internet or ecommerce merchants and don't apply as much to the retail merchants. PayPal is such an alternative. They offer you a merchant account to accept credit cards on your site and all they take is the discount rate. Now their discount rate is going to be a little higher or a lot higher than the competitive rates you will find from other sources, but they don't have any of the other rates and fees. Some things in life you have to pay for. At this point a merchant account is one of those things. If you are going to accept credit cards, it is going to cost you in one form or another. If someone is pitching you a free merchant account which you will have to pay nothing for, make sure you look at the deal closely before signing an paperwork. A lot of rates and fees can be hidden into clauses and so forth. If it all looks like you are getting a free merchant account, please email me so I can do it too. |
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