The Web Consumer Wants to Use Their Credit Card

To have an online business presence these days is easy. Anyone can set up a free Web site and start selling. But not all businesses are created equally.

To have a flourishing online business presence takes the willingness to accept payment online, and that requires signing on with the right credit card processing company for your business.

Part of the reason is practical. When a customer shopping online they can have $1,000,000 in cash sitting next to them computer but in that form it has no buying power in the virtual shopping world.

Another part of the equation is logistical. A person don’t have to use a credit card when you shop online – most e-retailers will let them mail in a check or money order, but that eliminates the speed and convenience consumers go online looking for.

This brings us back to credit cards (and debit cards). They are not just an avenue to pay for a purchase made over the Internet; they are a proven way to build you business. And not having them – as we will discuss shortly – can cripple your growth and profitability.

To fully realize the speed and convenience that your Web-browsing customers want, an e-merchant has to accept online payments. They like the idea that they can shop for what they want on their schedule. And hand-in-glove with that desire is to be able to pay for the purchase and get it in the delivery conduit immediately.

And that requires credit card acceptance. No two ways about it.

At this point some may be thinking that online storekeepers can take checks electronically, but if they have that service they will also have merchant account capabilities.

However, there is also the issue of credibility. People just flat out love the option of being able to shop over the Web – so much so that their attitudes are drifting in the direction of seeing card acceptance as a measure of validation. That is, any ‘net shopping site that does not take credit cards is more and more being viewed with the skepticism once reserved for slick used card salesmen.

They feel that something is not right if a business doesn’t accept credit cards. And is that the image you want when people think about your Web site. Or when they discuss it with their friends?

In the final analysis, online credit card processing brings so many positive aspects to any retailer operating over the Internet that it’s hard to mount an effective argument against the practice.

If offers your customers speed and convenience. It offer you a measure of credibility in what is becoming an increasingly crowded Web shopping landscape, while at the same time building you business and generating repeat shopping patterns.

So is there still a reason that you don’t want to align your business with a merchant services company? Or to put it another way, it there a reason that makes good sense (and dollars) for you not to accept credit cards?