Collecting Online Payments or Show me the Money!

Show me the Money!  Isn’t that the goal of any online business?  Make the money appear and then just happily make the deposits to your bank account.

But it is not just a matter of collecting and depositing, online money just doesn’t land in your hands ready for deposit.  There is a process. 

Here is what you will need to start collecting your money.

1.  A Bank Account.  Sure that is a no-brainer, you need an account to deposit your money.

2.  A Merchant Account.  This is how you will process payments. 
A merchant account is a specialized bank account by a merchant processing bank that allows a business to accept credit cards  (Visa and Mastercard) debit cards and other forms of payment cards. 

3.  A Shopping Cart.  A Shopping cart service will make the order forms and keep track of all of the orders. 

4. An Internet Gateway-This is a service that you subscribe to through your merchant.  The Gateway will run the credit cards and send the information back to the merchant bank’s processor.

There you have it, just 4 simple things you need to start “seeing the money”

Authorize.net is a good Internet Gateway to use.  They can also recommend some banks for your merchant account.  Do your shopping before deciding on the merchant account though as some of them do have some very restrictive policies.  Also be aware that a merchant account will only accept Visa or Mastercard.  If you are interested in accepting Discover or American Express you will need to go directly to the credit card company. 

Some of the Shopping carts that are available are 1shoppingcart.com , 2checkout.com., and for informational products one of the leaders is Clickbank.com. 
You may also find that Paypal can offer some valuable services.  Many people have become very comfortable using their services so that may be an additional option that you will want to use. 

Now is the time to put everything in place because you definitely want to be ready to collect your money.