The Importance of Accepting Credit Cards in Your Business

When you set up your gift basket business, youand credible companies accept credit cards.
are, of course, faced with numerous questions,2. By providing a safe buying environment
doubts, and options. One of them, and anAll web pages that accept credit card payments
important one at that, is whether to accept credithave encryption features and they are secured.
cards.Further, when making a purchase online via credit
Whether you have your business in a retail outletcard, customers are liable to credit card
or online or a combination of both, credit cardscompanies for only the first $50 in the case of
are the norm these days. Of course, there arefraud.
still some customers who prefer to pay usingYou have to be aware though that the fees for
cash or debit but most people have a credit cardaccepting credit card payments online are higher
and use one these days. And, if you assume thatthan in situations when a physical card is present.
you will have enough traffic flow by just cateringThis is due to the nature of Internet transactions:
to the non-credit card community, you might bethere is no customer to sign for the purchase nor
right but you might also be turning off potentiallyis there a physical card. This type of
high-valued customers, and those who could givetransaction-"Card Not Present" or "Mail Order
you repeat business. By not accepting creditTelephone Order" transaction is categorized as
cards, the word gets around too about yourhigher risk and therefore comes with a higher fee.
limitation in that respect and it may turn someBut, in the long run, the higher fee is well worth it.
would-be customers away.It will result in a larger customer base and one
In 1996 itself, credit card payments accounted forthat is more qualified in terms of the money they
88% of the $1.25 billion online transaction revenue,are willing to spend. This will eventually lead to
according to Jupiter Communications, which is anhigher turnover for you.
electronic commerce research firm in New York.You have to just bite the bullet when it comes to
And, their forecast is that credit card paymentsincurring the charges to set up a merchant
will account for over 50% of revenue inaccount to accept credit cards but it is better to
payments over the next millennium.run the whole gamut and set up everything right
So, accepting credit cards these days isas well. So, make sure that you also use a
extremely important. It helps to attract morereal-time authorization and processing service such
customers to your business and it does it in twoas CyberCash.
ways:Accept credit cards and be counted in as a
1. By lending credibility to your businessmerchant in step with the times.
It is the common conception that only reputable