Accepting Payments Online

Once you have established your website, and for those planning to have an online store or collect money for products or services, your next step is to accept payments online.

A Merchant Account is what allows you to bill your customers' credit cards for your products and services. Without a merchant account, your options are only cash or checks.

For smaller businesses with few products, we recommend opening a PayPal account. Your customers can purchase your goods and services with a credit card or their bank account. After a successful sale, you will receive an email to notify you that you have received an order and the funds have been deposited into your PayPal account. Next you can fulfill the customers order. Once the order has been shipped, you can mark the order as shipped and an email will be delivered to your customer to let them know that their product is on the way. Once you are ready to remove funds from your PayPal account you can deposit money into your bank account. It only takes a couple of days. You can also request that a check be mailed to you. PayPal makes it very easy to do business online. Visit PayPal's website to start accepting payments today.

Research shows that businesses that accept credit cards do 40% more business than those that do not, due to the convenience of using a credit card, and making an instant transaction.

We recommend giving the customer more than one payment option to make it easy for them to buy and so that you don't miss out on any sales.