Confusing‌ ‌Things‌ ‌About‌ ‌‌Accepting‌ ‌Online‌ ‌Credit‌ ‌Card‌‌ ‌Payments‌

As a direct-to-customer (D2C) business in this day and age, if you don’t accept card payments, you can’t do business. Credit and debit cards aren’t just the most popular point-of-sale (POS) payment methods in the U.S., they accounted for a whopping 67% of them in 2020. People prefer credit cards for a number of reasons — they’re ubiquitous; most outlets offer to let you pay with at least one type of credit card. They also offer customers convenient financing options and discounts with third-party tie-ups.

While you shouldn’t restrict yourself to just one mode of payment — there are certainly a lot of them to choose from — but accepting credit cards online has made payment processing easy for a lot of businesses.

The downside is that banks and card networks like Visa and Mastercard are well aware of just how convenient credit cards are for both the customer and the business, and aren’t hesitant to milk their service for all it’s worth. If you’re a small business or a startup, expensive transaction and interchange fees on credit cards are often the bane of your existence. They eat up a chunk of each transaction’s value, making it that much harder to turn a profit. Add to that the strict Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance standards you have to adhere to when accepting credit cards online.

Fortunately, there’s a solution for you. By integrating a unified payments processor for your transactions, you can save a bundle of cash for your business. Not only does it help avoid high fees, but it can also help streamline your cash flow and reduce the burden of PCI compliance for your company. Thousands of businesses, across industries, have reported that partnering with a payments processor has made online payment processing easy for them.

With Seamless Merchant, you can set up card payments for your business in a snap. Here’s a detailed step-by-step process for accepting credit cards online.

Step 1: Find a Reliable Payments Processor

This is key to getting your card payments right and creating long-term value for your business. A number of payment processors advertise low transaction fees but tend to have hidden charges and confusing pricing structures. Depending on what industry your business operates in, they may even be hesitant to accept you based on being considered “high risk.” With Seamless Merchant, you get not only consistently affordable, transparent pricing but also rapid account approvals regardless of the type of business. Moreover, you directly benefit from our over 25 direct banking relationships and can start accepting credit cards online, irrespective of where the purchase is made from.

Step 2: Set up a Merchant Account

This is often one of the most annoying parts of configuring your payments setup. It’s not uncommon for payment providers to drown you in legalese and have elaborate onboarding processes when all you want to do is just get down to business. Seamless Merchant charges you no contractual or setup fees and the sign-up literally takes you just a minute to complete.

Step 3: Integrate with Your Shopping Cart Checkout

Once your account is approved, we will deploy the payment gateway of your choice and provide the credentials to connect with your shopping cart. You can even set up mobile payments for easy processing on the go.

Step 4: Start Accepting Payments

With this, you’re done! You’re ready to have those customer payments rolling in.

Credit cards aren’t going away anytime soon, no matter how much you’d like them to. However, as a business, you can make accepting and processing online credit card payments easy for yourself.

Seamless Chex has been in business for over 10 years and began as a way to help businesses avoid the high transaction costs and long underwriting process. If you have questions about how our payments platform works, please refer to our FAQs or simply reach out to our payment experts. They’ll be happy to recommend a solution that works for you and doesn’t break the bank in the process.