Choosing the best gateway and merchant accounts is not a simple task, but you can start to make a list of the things you will need for your site before signing up.

First what are you planning to sell?

Many merchant accounts and gateways have sets of rules to follow and terms and conditions. You want to find out what these are and read through them before signing up to a gateway or merchant account. We recently had a company that was contacted by their merchant account and was told that it was against policy to sell a 7 out of of 4500 items on their website. This is not a big deal, but it still takes a few more hours and dollars to fix the problem that could have been fixed by reading through the 10 pages of terms by the merchant account.

Then who is the best merchant account?

It depends o:

• What you are selling
• if you need reoccurring payments
• What spam filters for payments you will need
• How much do you want to pay per transaction?

All  of these factors come into play when choosing a gateway and merchant account.

So what are the top gateway and merchant account companies?

In no particular order:

• Authorize.net
• Paypal
• Paypal Payments pro
• 2Checkout
• Your local bank ( always check where you bank, as they may have a online solution)

So there you have it! I hope this can get you started on your way to buying online! If you need any help give the custom e-commerce web design guys a call today!