Online Merchant Accounts…
A Case Study on Gateway and Cart Integration
Recently a long time friend of mine ran into a major problem with her shopping cart and gateway.
It didn’t strictly have anything to do with our end of processing payments, but she called just to keep me posted with the progress.
Turns out her gateway had an issue, and they were correcting the problem on the back end. A tense hour later and everything was fine… or so she thought.
See, she called me back the next day. No orders had been processed through the website since the back office worked on the gateway.
Ouch!
She called authorize.net and her shopping cart people, and they weren’t much help. So I walked her through some of the selections, check boxes, transaction keys and login stuff.
And it turns out that a certain little box didn’t get checked off to generate a new transaction key. Once she did that I went to their site and entered an order to check it out, and…
** problem solved! **
She said to me…
“Mike, I called my shopping cart people and the authorize.net people, and no one fixed my problem. I spend 10 minutes on the phone with you and it’s solved. How can I thank you?”
And I said, “can I quote you on that?”
(Needless to say, she was happy to do so).
Shopping Cart Integration
Believe it or not there is more to having a merchant account than the percentage rate someone quotes you. For starters, you need to consider…
- if their platform (gateway) integrates with your shopping cart solution (don’t assume they all do, because many sales reps can ONLY represent one company, and thus ONE gateway
- if their gateway allows for recurring billing, and if so, if there’s an extra “hidden” monthly charge
- who the “go to person” is when you encounter a problem
- if your shopping cart and gateway require a valid SSL certificate
- what sort of security switches and settings your cart allows for
Ongoing service IS important.
So be sure to use someone who will be there for you and your business when you need it!
Too often, I’ve run into business owners who bought overpriced software solutions, only to realize that they are not free to choose any merchant account provider they desire.
Many software providers also offer merchant accounts. On the face of it, this may not seem like a problem. Until you see their rates and fees.
One merchant I spoke to was paying over 4% on some transactions. Ouch!
So, the bottom line is this…
If you’re new to all this, it pays to speak to someone who is objective, and can evaluate your business goals and the kind of shopping cart best suited to your needs.
And by objective, I mean someone who isn’t just trying to sell you some overpriced or over-hyped shopping cart.
Second, once your cart is chosen, make sure the person you’re talking with can actually integrate with it, as well as providing you a range of services (like auto rebilling, virtual terminal support, etc.)
Merchant Account Set Up
If you need help with shopping cart set up, there are a couple of ways you can get started.
You can request a merchant account quote. Simply fill out the short form and we will contact the appropriate merchant account providers for you.
You can download a free report of the Merchant Account Guide. Just follow the link to download your copy today.
Finally, you can follow the link to scan a list of internet merchant account providers in your area that can help you set up your system.
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