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Sell Product Online > Merchant Account Provider > Small Business Merchant Accountt
Small Business Merchant AccountSmall businesses have special needs when it comes to merchant accounts compared the larger businesses. One of these needs are that small businesses don't have the money the larger businesses have to spend on things like a merchant account. There really isn't such a thing as a small business merchant account, but there are some companies which offer alternatives to normal merchant accounts.These small business merchant accounts only charge you when a purchase is made. There are no monthly fees. This way a small business isn't wasting money on fees when no purchases are being made. Three of the main players in the small business merchant account space are ProPay, PayPal, and 2Checkout.com. We will discuss a little about each of these. ProPayProPay is closer to an actual merchant account than either PayPal or 2Checkout.com. At ProPay you can signup and get approved for an account online. They setup everything so it looks just like a normal merchant account, you can even set the statement identifier, which is what shows up on the credit card statements. There are no ongoing fees, expect when purchases are made. With this being a dynamic industry their pricing on rates changes a lot so you will need to visit their website to find the current rates.The downside of this small business merchant account from ProPay is you have to enter all the transactions in manually through their virtual terminal interface. So, when you receive an order, you go to their website, enter all the information into a web form, and submit the transaction. You will then receive notification of the success or failure of the transaction. The only alternative to this is to pay $395 dollars the first year and $195 dollars for each year after for access to an XML Authorization Interface, which if you are going to pay $400 dollars a year for this, you might as well get a "real" merchant account where you will probabaly pay around $30 a month or about $360 a year, plus this real merchant account will grow with your company better than a small business merchant account from ProPay. PayPalBy now most people have heard of PayPal and how anyone can accept payments online using PayPal. What people might not know is PayPal is working on becoming more involved in the payment industry. PayPal recently acquired VeriSigns payment business. This signifies they are working more on becoming a real merchant account provider instead of just a small business merchant account provider. We need to pay attention to what they choose to do, it may turn out to be great for the small business, or it may not help us at all.PayPal is less of a small business merchant account and more like asking a friend to do the work for you. While this may sound like a great idea, it provides less protection on some levels with fraud and chargebacks. On the opposite side PayPal does have some policies where they will refund you the fees you had to pay on some fraudulent purchase, just don't hold your breath when working with them. Sometimes they can be quick and right on top of things, and other times it can take a long time. Be sure to check out PayPal for the latest information. Since they are one of the largest of the small business merchant account providers we can hope they will stay in this arena and improve their place among the others with more acquisitions to help us the small business owners. 2Checkout.comOkay now just because their name ends in dot com doesn't mean they are here today and gone tomorrow. 2Checkout.com has become a major player in the small business merchant account business. They have grown by providing an alternative to PayPal and other merchant account providers.2Checkout.com runs the middle ground between PayPal and ProPay. It is more of a small business merchant account than PayPal is, but it is less of one than ProPay. At 2Checkout.com you will probably pay slightly higher fees than at the other providers, but they provide an interface to go from your current website through checkout, which ProPay is missing unless you pay for the extra features. With 2Checkout.com all purchases made through your business will show 2Checkout.com on the credit card billing statement. This is the one thing ProPay provides which also provides you with more protection from the credit card companies than 2Checkout.com does. Comparison Chart
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