Question of the week: What’s the fastest and easiest way to accept credit cards?

Posted by Jay Medina on Feb 17, 2009 in Profit Growth, Q & A4 comments

This is a question I’m asked constantly, and so it would make sense that it would qualify as the Question of the Week. I’d like to add, however, that I not only want to answer what the fastest and easiest way to accept credit cards is, but I also want to add that it is also one of the safest, and cheapest ways as well.

So, let’s explore the fastest, easiest, safest, and cheapest way for you to accept credit cards for your business.

It’s the age-old question. How do I go about accepting credit cards? What credit cards can I accept? Do I need a credit card machine? Whether your business offers hard goods, soft goods, or services, there is no doubt you need a way to accept credit cards.

Back in the horse and buggy days…

First, I’ll outline the hard way, which is how I did it when I opened my first consulting practice, back in the mid to late 90’s. I needed a way to accept credit cards for payment of invoices, but also, since I sold computers and other hardware, I needed a way to accept credit card payments, as a courtesy to my customers. That’s one of the Golden Rules of Sales: Make it easy for your customer to buy!

Ok, so I contacted a credit card merchant company. Easy enough. But then, they wanted to meet with me. So, they sent a sales rep to my office. I don’t know about you, but meeting with sales people was not my idea of a good time. Then, they talked about getting everything set up, for a fee. Then, for me to get a credit card machine, I’d need to “lease” the machine. Ok, more money out the window for the convenience of my customers to pay with a credit card. What’s next?

Well, I wanted for my customers to be able to buy some of my computers and hardware off of my website, so I needed e-commerce capabilities. Now, this was back in the late 90’s, so I guess you could say things were a little backwards back then. Because, in order to do e-commerce, I needed to have a few things in order. Here’s my list of what I needed back then:

Shopping cart software. I had to have a way for my customers to select what they wanted to buy, even for just one or two items.
Programming knowledge of PERL, or the ability to figure out cryptic instructions as I had to install the shopping cart software, integrate it to the Linux web server hosting my site, and tie it in to the credit card processing company. Lots of late nights and coffee for this step alone!
An SSL security certificate, so that their purchases were protected and encrypted.
A special bank account that would accept ACH (automatic clearing house) payments from the credit card company.

And so came the Renaissance of credit card processing!

Well, since that was the late 90’s, technology has come a long way, and thankfully, you don’t need any of those things listed above these days to accomplish the same thing. Enter PayPal! PayPal has made it so easy to take credit cards, even a Pre-Modern Neandrethal Cave-Dwelling Man could do it. (Like how I stayed politically correct on that one? Never know who might be reading this!)

Here’s what PayPal does for you, that credit card merchants couldn’t do in the late 90’s and still can’t (or won’t) do today:

Set you up with a merchant account with NO COST up front.
Accept all major credit cards, including American Express, for no additional fees.
Provide a secure gateway for your customers to pay while encrypting their information (SSL hosted for you)
They don’t require programming knowledge, late nights, or lots of coffee to integrate their shopping cart into your website.
No special bank accounts required for ACH. PayPal will transfer your money to any bank account you specify, as long as it has a routing number. Most all bank accounts have those these days.

Although PayPal doesn’t offer credit card machines, who needs one? All you need is a computer with an Internet connection and with PayPal, you can instantly invoice your customer, or with your customer standing there, you can go to your site, select the product or service in question, click the button to buy now, and invite your customer to pay right then and there on your PC.

As I’ve been a PayPal merchant since at least 2001, I can say that going the PayPal route is definitely a smarter use of one’s time. That’s because it takes very little time to get up and running with PayPal. And they’re very flexible, too. If you have one or two products, they have easy solutions for accepting payments for that. If you have the entire catalog of Norwegian Shouting Choruses available on CD, spanning the entire 3,000 year history of the art, PayPal has special tie-ins that will enable you to use your own shopping cart to tie into their payment gateway.

What’s more is, most shopping cart software programs already have pre-built tie-ins to PayPal. Bear in mind, though, PayPal is not a web host. They won’t host your entire website, they’ll only host your payment buttons and process your customer’s transaction. If you need hosting, click here, for affordable web hosting that will suit your needs for a website and shopping cart.

If you’d like to learn more about PayPal’s fantastic merchant service offerings, click the image below:

So, there we are! In this article, we’ve covered the fastest, easiest, safest, and cheapest way to accept credit cards. Thanks for reading and doing something positive today!

To Help You Get Started:

Business Class Web Hosting with Shopping Cart Software

PayPal Merchant Services – No Cost To Start Up

No related posts.

Jay Medina

As your Helpful Advisor, Jay Medina has over 20 years experience as an Information Technology professional and over 10 years of successful business writing. Jay Medina has 48 post(s) at Helpful Advisor

4 Responses to “Question of the week: What’s the fastest and easiest way to accept credit cards?”

Jennifer Mitchell says:
February 28, 2009 at 12:32 am

PayPal is very small-medium business friendly. I recommend it to my clients al the time.

Great article!

reply
Josh Wilmoth says:
March 4, 2009 at 8:01 am

We accept credit card thru our accounting software QuickBooks Online Edition. Their solution isn’t for everybody but it suites us very well. Less than 5% of our Clients pay via Credit Card which helps keep the monthly processing fees manageable. We wanted to create a professional and secure method to allow our Clients to do business with us.

reply
Watch Free Movies says:
November 13, 2009 at 12:33 pm

Stumbled on your website from Google Search as i was looking to know something about credit cards in details. Read the whole article on your site and i must say that me and my husband loved reading your post. So i thought of sharing a tip to all your users: For the lowest discount rates for transactions at a point of sale location, try to avoid typing in the credit cards numbers manually, but rather swipe the credit card with your terminal. A swiped credit card is typically given a lower discount rate per transaction. We bookmarked your website. Thanks alot – Steffi

reply
- Jay Medina says:
  November 13, 2009 at 2:36 pm
  
  Hi Steffi, thanks for stopping by and giving a great tip to our readers here. I’m also glad to hear you enjoyed the article. Hope to see you here often, being part of the community!
  
  reply