OK, we've all heard of WAHMs taking Visa/MC, but how does it happen?

I haven't researched too much yet, but I feel my sales could be higher if I accepted credit cards.

So if you've been there, how do you get set up with a merchant account? What sort of documentation do you need to provide? Inquiring minds want to know :)

I think there is some middle-ground between a true merchant account and what some WAHMs use to accept credit cards. I've heard of a couple services (maybe one was c2it?, but that's no longer available).

For a true merchant account, you need a proessor and a merchant account. So, you get say... Verisign to process the cards you accept, then you need a merchant account as well. Also, you need individual accounts with each credit card company you accept.

Now, it's all very confusing and I don't even know WHY you need both, but you do. We are a corporation, so we were not required to go through a credit check and only had to provide our estimated earnings. I'm not sure how it's handled for an individual requesting an account.

You can read more about VeriSign's service here:

http://www.verisign.com/products/payment.html

PayFlow Link is the basic model that allows you to host your transactions on their server so you don't have to have your own SSL certificate.

I honestly don't know much about any of the other services out there. But I hope that is a little helpful. I do think there are some other options that are LIKE a merchant account that will allow you to accept cards, because I've seen some WAHMs using them.

www.propay.com is what I use.

I use a free shopping cart and paypal. Paypal recently simplified so that is just looks like someone is paying with a CC, not signing up for a paypal account.

Lots of wahms use Costco for processing CCs. It is way cheaper than most other companies.

i use www.propay.com it's the cheapest and easiest route i've found

Okay, a few questions on propay. First, does the customer have to sign up for a propay acount prior to paying for their order? And second, does propay integrat with the mals' cart?

the way propay works is this. You sign up for an account, your customer doesn't have to do anything. You set up your shopping cart, either Mal's or whatever, to just collect the CC information and exp. date. That's it. Then you get the information from the order, and manually enter it into propay and it will email the customer a receipt. It takes all of 1 minute, is super easy.

Hope that helps.

Payfuse Only good if you are pulling in over $700 a month in sales. They have a lower fee per transaction, but you have to make a minimun in sales every month or they sock you fees.
Paypal Everyone should have Paypal as an option at least. Almost all Wahm's use this when buying from one another.
MyPaySystems This is the one I currently use as a credit card processor and have had no problems. Paypal uses a 2.5% per transaction fee for credit cards, and Paysystems uses 5.5%. However, not all of your internet customers will want to sign up to use Paypal. So it's good to have the option, or you might lose a sale.
Propay Seems to be well loved by several WAHMs, but the html isn't built into my cart, and I didn't want to implement it. I'm sure it's a good option for those html wizards.
2checkout As far as I'm concerned it's the same as mypaysystems. The only difference is paysystems will deposit your money every other week and 2checkout will only do it once a month. Both my paysystems and 2checkout have a $50 sign up fee.

This is just my input, and it's been at least 4 months since I did the research. Hope this helps some...

Propay doesn't integrate with your cart with html at all, you have to collect to cc information through your cart (easy with mals) and then manually enter it. There is only a one time year charge of $35, and if you do at least 10 sales of $20 a month average, even at a low 2.2%, you will still be paying $52.80 a year, so propay is going to save you money even with relatively low sales.

Just a thought.

I use 2checkout and it does work with mals. And you don't have to enter the customers info--they do it all themselves.

They actually pay you twice per month. Basically the 1st and the 15th. I get direct deposits from them.