New Merchant Account

Selling products or services on the Internet can be extremely lucrative, and by building your company’s online presence now, you’ll benefit from a maturing industry and the latest technology that offers convenience, ease of use and secure transactions for all parties. For companies that already have an online presence and those just starting out, we provide an introduction to e-Commerce, with information you’ll need to know before you build or update your online store.

Shopping Carts and Online Payment Processing

It’s likely you have your domain name and a hosting company, and that you know what products or services you’ll be offering. You probably also know your suppliers and who your competitors are. After you choose the best Shopping Cart software application for your requirements, you’ll need a merchant account, which is a system for accepting credit cards as payment from your customers.
An e-Commerce Shopping Cart is software that runs on your company’s web server. On the customer’s side, it lets them browse your products, search for a particular item in your store inventory, add a product to a virtual shopping basket and place their order. Ideally, the online shopping cart seamlessly integrates with the rest of your business’s website, letting your customer click on a link from various pages that will bring them into the product page and ordering process.

Shopping carts usually include the following components:

• A database that stores product details, customer data and order information
• A storefront that displays this information to online store visitors, in the form of product detail pages, search results, checkout pages, etc.
• An administration console where you can manage all aspects of your store. The most basic console lets you add products, set up shipping and payment options and process orders. Other options may include being able to send out marketing email to your customer base, offer special promotions and create sales reports.

While there are hundreds of shopping carts available, at eMerchant, we are your online marketing partners, helping you to navigate the e-Commerce jungle. To these ends, we include several shopping cart recommendations on our Partners page.

After you choose your shopping cart, you will need a payment gateway that integrates or “plugs into” the online shopping cart and offers secure transactions. This gateway transmits the information from the payment page, which includes the customer’s credit card information, to the cardholder’s bank. When this is done, you’ll receive an approval for the amount of the transaction. Once you get this approval, you can ship the product to your customer.

Getting Paid

As every merchant’s favorite part of the online buying process, getting paid is obviously critically important. This is where your merchant account kicks into action. It allows you to be paid for your products or services, notifying your designated bank about the transaction details (known as “batching out”). Your Merchant Bank then contacts the Cardholder’s bank to obtain the money and transfers it to your account. This process takes 2 days.

The ideal merchant account provider will set up your payment gateway, integrate it with your shopping cart and provide you with not just competitive rates but with ongoing, personalized support.

eMerchant is one of the world’s leading merchant account providers. We specialize in secure, reliable e-Commerce transactions and in creating strong working relationships with our clients. We’ve been supporting businesses of all sizes with low rates, the highest approvals, easy integration and personalized service with a dedicated account manager. We have helped thousands of new businesses develop their online sales presence and accept credit card payments on their sites ( we also do non profit card card processing, if you run a non profit or charity.). Read our customer reviews and contact us to get started!