If you’re an entrepenuer that owns an off-line store that’s now just getting onto the web to sell online as well, you will need a couple of critical tools to succeed.  One of them is the ability to accept credit cards.

If you haven’t been accepting credit cards at your offline store, you will have to get a merchant account to accept credit cards online.  Of course, you can set-up a PayPal Business Account (free) which allows you to take any major credit card and e-checks.  PayPal now even has the option of accepting credit cards at your website WITHOUT the customer knowing about PayPal — thus they become just like any other merchant account credit card processing company in the background.

The other option is to open a more traditional merchant account like from a sponsoring company called Advantage Processors.  There are plenty of companies that offer services to e-merchants specifically as well.  One option that might be important when you’re choosing is to find that that does both online and offline sales, so that you can start to accept credit cards at your own store as well.

That’s the 1st step before you set-up your site — get a merchant account so that you can get paid.  Otherwise, why set-up a website store if you can’t sell?



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