- Merchant Account
- Software
- Internet Service Provider
A Merchant account for business is a special account that you open with a financial institution to accept credit card payments from customers. It may not be enough if you are already accepting credit cards for your offline transactions. Credit card companies consider Internet transactions to be riskier than other standard transactions so, not all accounts permit Internet transactions. If your current merchant account does not allow Internet transactions, you have to contact your financial institution to correct this.
To maintain your merchant account, you must pay the following monthly fees:
- Discount fee - For Internet sales, this fee should be between 2.5% and 2.9%. You should be suspicious of any discount rate that is less than that.
- Transaction fee - This fee should be between $0.20 and $0.30 per transaction.
- Address Verification Fee (AVS) - This fee should be $0.05 per transaction. Some (very rare) financial institutions may not require this service, but it is a must for you because it helps to prevent fraud.
- Statement fee - This fee is usually between $10 and $15 per month.





