E Commerce and Merchant Accounts?

Question

Is it necessary to have a seperate merchant account for e commerce? When a sale is made online do you not receive an order with the customers information and CC number. Could the CC number be entered into your POS manually as an instore sale then shipped? I understand its a little more time consuming but I don't expect to be receiving hundreds of internet sales daily.

Answer 1

Visa and MasterCard require that you have a separate merchant account for all Internet sales. This is because Internet sales comprise the vast majority of Internet fraud and all Internet sales must be separated so if there is a problem with your Internet sales they can be stopped without affecting your non-Internet sales.

When processing an order placed over the Internet your POS software MUST be ECI compliant. ECI stands for "Electronic Commerce Indicator". All Internet sales must send over a special flag that shows that transaction occurred over the Internet. All major payment gateways (Authorize.Net, Verisign, etc.) are ECI compliant. Most POS software is NOT compliant (PC Charge is ECI compliant). No credit card terminals are ECI compliant. This means you MUST either use a payment gateway or one of the few ECI compliant pieces of POS software available.

If you do not plan to use a payment gateway for instant payment and plan to run your sale through an ECI compliant piece of software you must make sure your website is PCI DSS compliant. The PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) dictates how to securely handle credit cards including storing it. Basically, you have some high hurdles to overcome to be compliant if you plan on storing/emailing credit card numbers for the sake of processing them manually later.

In practice a lot of companies ignore these guidelines but if you get caught, not only will you never be able to get a merchant account again, but you may get sued if your data is ever stolen.

Answer 2

When a sale is made online, the software on your Web site automatically verifies the credit card and charges it. The sensitive credit card information (number, expiration date, CVV code, etc.) is submitted to the processor electronically over a secure connection, but IS NOT STORED ON THE WEB SITE (storing such information entails substantial security risk; only large e-commerce companies that own their servers and buildings in which those servers are located can mitigate those risks to any meaningful extent). So no, you do not normally get the CC number with an online order; you only get a confirmation number which you can use to reverse the transaction should the need arise. You can, but you really shouldn't; that's basic security you need not neglect.

Can you use your POS terminal and your Web site with the same merchant account? That's something you need to ask your processing company. Many companies allow you to run a POS terminal and a Web site with the same merchant account; others do either POS-only or Web-only. Some companies that do allow you to run a POS terminal and a Web site with the same merchant account have rather convoluted technology on the Web front. The prime example is QuickBooks Merchant Services; your software ends up sending three requests to two different servers to effect a payment.

Answer 3

You have to have a POS Merchant Account where funds go into and to process those sales, you even have to set up a Merchant Account, even at your local bank to get a terminal or transfer gateway for funds to enter your account, anywhere.

Paypal is a good source to accept cc from all. You will have to open an account, however.

Answer 4

If you would like accept credit cards, I suggest working with Payanywhere. They give the lowest commission rates. They have zero set up or month to month costs. I have been taking credit cards with them for more than 5 years and I'm very happy with the service. You can check that out at: http://is.gd/payanywhere