Credit card processing for small businesses is a crucial step to ensure transactions are completed without any issues.
For SMEs, it ensures a steady stream of income from customers who are easily able to complete their transactions.
Having an all-in-one system in place means you can quickly and securely process customers’ payments. This keeps your business competitive and sets you up to manage payments in the long-term.
So, in this guide we’ll take you through how the technology works for your business and how to integrate it into your website.
A credit card processing company is an intermediary directly between you (the merchant) and your customers’ credit card supplier.
The processor allows your online business (or physical store) to accept and process credit/debit card payments.
Although the technology behind the scenes is complex, ultimately it works to ensure paying by card is easy for your customers. As well as straightforward to manage for your business.
It’s possible to break down the process into eight steps. We’ll do that now so you have a better understanding of how the technology works.
It can take up to 48 hours for the merchant to receive the funds.
This may sound odd, but it’s to ensure a thorough and secure process is followed that protects your business’ interests. Along with those of your customers.
The best way for modern businesses to accept credit card payments is by using a merchant gateway. There are many of these to choose from, but FasterPay is an example.
Ultimately, the “best” way to take payments is the method that works best for your business. So, consider what your business needs to make sure customers can pay.
And in most instances, the best approach you can take is to use a credit card processor. This ensures you can quickly and securely process transactions.
All while offering the best security measures for your business and its customers. It’s also a cost-effective method to use—you can find out why below.
The cheapest way to accept credit card payments is to sign up for a credit card processing service.
This is cost-effective over the long-term and will also increase your payment acceptance rates. That’s because customers find this online payment method one of the best and easiest to use.
So, to keep your costs down you should:
There’s a fixed fee with these charges, that’s how card processing companies make their money from customers.
But this works out well for SMEs on a long-term basis. It’s cost-effective and keeps your business competitive, ensuring you keep customers happy.
So the ROI on having a payment processor is a very good investment.
In most instances, credit card processing fees are between 1.3% and 3.5%.
There’s also the charge of the payment processor. How much that is comes down to the business and how much they charge.
Unfortunately, you can’t outright avoid them. However, there are steps you can take to keep the costs down.
Just by using a credit card processor you’re dealing with experts, which means you’ll face the best service and low charges to begin with.
If you’re an SME on the lookout for the payment processor to keep your business competitive, then we offer a
FasterPay is an excellent option if you’re looking for merchant account credit card processing.
You can easily integrate our payment platform into your website.
Whether you have coding experience or not, it’s simply to setup and provide your business with:
We have a full FasterPay for business guide for everything else you need to know about how we support SMEs across the world.
A credit card processing company makes its money by charging fees for certain tasks.
Every time a customer completes a transaction with you, they take a percentage of that.
This is usually between 1% and 3% of the transaction amount.
Visa’s role in online credit card processing is to provide the infrastructure to support financial organizations who issue and process credit and debit cards.
However, Visa doesn’t issue plastic, set any fees, or set interest rates. Issuing members have the option to set those fees.
The scale of Visa allows it to operate in this way. It processes over 100 billion transactions a year with a volume nearing US$7 trillion.
It depends where you are in the world, but this is often banned. In the UK, for example, crest and debit card surcharges were banned in January 2018.
In many nations the legislation means customers can’t be charged more when they choose to pay by card.
But it’s a good idea to check your local laws so you’re aware of whether you can charge customers or not.
But it isn’t a good idea anyway, as customers can be put off from using your service if you charge them.
A POS system lets your business accept payments from customers. It also tracks your sales.
Traditionally, it was a cash register. But in the digital age, these are now pieces of software that check out your customers wherever they may be in the world.
If you have a device like a tablet or smartphone, you just need a POS app and you’re all set. This is how it works:
What to consider when choosing a POS system generally includes the price you’ll need to pay, whether the service has a good reputation, and if it’ll do the job for you!
Every business is different and you’ll have specific needs to meet.
But there are some services that deliver everything you need in one package. And we’re one example of how to grow your brand with an all-in-one platform.
Sign up with FasterPay to sort out your credit card processing needs.
To take advantage of FasterPay’s merchant services, all you need to do is create a free FasterPay business account now and get started.
We also have a free app that’s available here:
And if you need any help, we have a 24/7 customer support team waiting to answer any questions: support@fasterpay.com.