Merchant Account Fees
Every time you process a credit card transaction through your merchant account, you are charged both a transaction fee that is a flat-rate, and also a percentage of the transaction. This is called the transaction fee, and discount rate fee. To further complicate the fees, the discount rate is broken down in to four tiers- debit card transactions, qualified transactions, mid-qualified transactions, and non-qualified transactions.

Debit cards generally are the cheapest merchant account processing fees, since the bank takes little risk when someone enters their pin number. Qualified transactions are generally when the credit card is present, mid-qualified is generally for Internet merchant account transactions, non-qualified is when the card isn’t present, and when it’s normally a business credit card.

PayPal is large. Visa & American Express are much larger, and have a much better reach. In addition, setting up with a merchant account provider is not difficult. It’s generally not a step by step process, like PayPal, but your time will be well spent here. In terms of fees, merchant accounts are generally cheaper than PayPal. It’s very much in your best interest to take the time, and get it sorted.

While Visa and American Express, Discover, and so forth are so widely accepted, especially on the Internet, it’s interesting to find that business owners are generally clueless on how it all works. The fees, if their merchant provider is giving them a good rate, and what other options for accepting credit cards are available. As MerchantAccountSearch.com progresses, we hope that you’ll find our research helpful in your search for a merchant account provider.