The savvy business owner who plans to accept payments on the Web must form an alliance with a online">www.paynetsystems.com">online payment processing company. There are a multitude of firms to choose from, and one should exercise due diligence in the selection process to avoid those that are overpriced and/or do not engage in fair-minded business practices.

Among the payment processing providers, there are two distinct entities: ones that provide merchant accounts and others that proclaim themselves as "no merchant account" providers. The latter group accepts payments on the owner's behalf and offers a rather easy set-up. Payments are taken on their site (not the owner's), and owed funds are forwarded to the owner two or three times a month.

The order form, either supplied by the owner, his/her Web designer or the processing company, is simple to design.

Once created, it must be on a secure server. When any customer enters his/her credit card information, it is sent in plain, unencrypted text form to the server hosting the Web site. As it is possible to intercept this data, SSL encryption (usually 128-bit) must be employed. Many merchant account providers offer this secure server with official certificate. An owner who is going to use a payment processing provider should not have to spend money on obtaining this.

The gateway serves to transmit information from the customer to the credit card processor. At first, within seconds of the customer submitting his/her credit card information, the processor either authorizes the transaction or declines it. If an authorization code is given, the customer's account is not charged, but his/her credit limit is reduced. Subsequently, the approved customer's information becomes "captured" and the authorized amount of money is then charged to the consumer's credit card. This capture becomes part of the merchant's batch and travels through the gateway again. The processor then knows to finalize and settle the transaction, and voila, the owner is paid. So the gateway is actually the owner's gateway towards profit.

Many merchant account providers offer a shopping cart that integrates with their gateway. Even if the owner already has a shopping cart, chances are good that the gateway can work in concert with it. It is best that an owner look for a merchant account provider that can serve as a "one-stop-shop," providing its own secure server with certificate, gateway and shopping cart.

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