Merchant Services

To take credit card information online you need to a Payment Gateway and a Merchant Account. When installling and configuring your software, ICI will link your ecommerce pages to either your Merchant Account or your Payment Gateway.

A Merchant Account is a contract under which an acquiring bank extends a line of credit to a merchant, who wishes to accept payment card transactions of a particular card association brand. Without such a contract, one cannot accept payments by any of the major credit card brands. Applying for a merchant account is similar to a bank application. Please allow time for the process to take place. A Payment Gateway is a service that authorizes credit card or checking information instantly upon the conclusion of a customer's transaction on your website.

Here is how it works: A customer's sales information is sent encrypted to your Payment Gateway. The Payment Gateway determines whether the payment information is correct. If OK, the Payment Gateway sends the information to your Merchant Account who then deposits the money from the transaction directly to your bank account.

When choosing a Payment Gateway and Merchant Account, you are looking for the lowest transaction and processing fee as well as the how quickly the cash will get to you bank account.

Rates vary, but to give you some notion of the cost as well as the questions to ask:

Rates are negotiable based on type of industry and volume of sales.

Popular Merchant Gateways

• http://www.authorize.net
• http://www.plugnpay.com/
• http://www.firstdata.com/linkpoint/

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