A cbd oil friendly merchant account, whereby a business owner is able to accept customer’s debit, credit, or ATM card is a must for both ecommerce and retail outlet businesses in today’s business world. There are many reasons why a merchant account is important. A cbd merchant who accepts credit cards knows the convenience, professional image, and cost effectiveness. A merchant account is easy to use, as well.
A merchant account offers many advantages. For instance, a merchant account provides your customers with new payment options. With a cbd visa mastercard discover amex merchant account, you receive your money almost immediately with no problems collecting months old invoices and receivables, but your customers can still pay on a per month basis. You never have long delays waiting for your money to arrive.
The funds are transferred directly to your bank upon your request. The transfer process is as simple as a click on a button, and no long delays in payment. A merchant account makes it easier for your clients to pay. They don’t have to worry about check forms, forgetting to post a transaction amount into a checkbook register. Carrying a credit or debit card is safer than carrying cash.
A cannabis payment service merchant account increases your overall cash flow, not only are you able to improve the number of sales you can make, often the sales will be for larger items or more money. You get your money faster than through other methods. You can make substantial improvement to the amount of money lost through uncollectible debts, because customers will have another option by which they can make payments.
A merchant account is particularly important for an online business. Since you are not available personally to accept and record the payment of cash or checks, having a merchant account allows you to take advantage of the customer’s ability to use a credit card to pay for services.
An ecommerce customer is able to visit your website and, by utilizing the shopping cart software, can submit secure payment information in order to pay for the transaction before leaving your site. This makes it possible for the impulse buyer to be transformed into a paying customer. Because of the convenience of utilizing a credit card at a secure site online, the customer is more likely to return to your site when he is again shopping for the type of product which you provide.
Obtaining a merchant account helps to lend legitimacy to your business. The customers will realize you are not just some person trying to scam them. If you’ve gone through the process of applying for and obtaining a merchant account, it provides the customer an additional layer of protection through their credit card provider.
It also provides you as the merchant an extra layer of support, protection and security. So long as proper security procedures are followed, you are protected from the losses which would be incurred by customer fraud.
A cbd / cannabis oil payment gateway is an application service provider for ecommerce that acts as a bridge between the shopping cart or merchant’s website and all the monetary systems which are a part of the transaction, credit card issuing bank of the customer and the merchant account for the business. The payment gateway functions as an electronic funds transfer point of sale terminal in cyberspace.
A payment gateway provides a smooth and rapid transfer of information between the merchant website or interactive voice response service and the acquiring bank or front-end processor. The sequence of tasks that are performed usually only requires 3-4 seconds of time and is invisible to the customer.
The customer places an order on the merchant’s website by clicking on “place order” or “submit order” or equivalent button. Sometimes they enter card information on an interactive voice response service. If the order is placed on a website, the customer’s web browser provides the encryption of the information which will be transmitted from the customer’s web browser and the merchant’s web server. This typically is completed by way of Secure Socket Layer encryption (SSL).
The business then sends the transaction particulars through to their payment gateway which contains the data of their merchant account transaction. Typically, this is another Secure Socket Layer encrypted link to the payment server hosted by the payment gateway.
The payment gateway receives the transaction details from the business, then sends it to merchant's acquiring bank, which in turn sends the data to the customer’s issuing bank for authorization. The bank which issued the customer’s card gets the request for authorization and submits a reply to the payment gateway by way of the acquiring bank with an attached code for response. The response code defines both the results of the request for authorization of payment—either “approved” or “denied” and the reason why the authorization was not granted.
The payment gateway receives the reply and sends it to the website or payment processing site where the interpretation and response is sent on the the website (or whatever interface was used to process the payment) where it is interpreted and a relevant response then forwarded on to the customer.
On a daily basis or at the end of the settlement period, the merchant’s bank places the total of approved monies in the merchant’s regular bank account or whichever bank is designated by the merchant.
If you purchase a shopping cart for your website separately from the merchant account and gateway, you should make sure the payment gateway package is compatible with the shopping cart. It is more common for the entire package including a merchant account and payment gateway package to be purchased at the same time and added to the shopping cart.
When choosing a payment gateway separately, you should review options such as price, compatibility, dependability and fees involved before signing any contracts. Make sure you know exactly what the total fees will be, so that you don’t receive an unpleasant surprise along with the first monthly statement. .
As it relates to merchant accounts, the discount rate is the percentage of each transaction dollar which the merchant is charged in order to process the transaction. The rates charged will vary according to many different factors, including the volume of business, the type of business, and whether the card is swiped through a point of sale terminal or is a ‘no-card-present’ transaction.
With various types of transactions and various types of cards, there are about 130 different categories of fees for most credit cards. Generally, a business credit card costs more than does a consumer credit card and a consumer credit card is more expensive than a check card. Varying costs to process has the most impact on which category of transaction will be applied to a charge against a card.
Most of the transaction based fees are grouped into either three or six tiers. The three tier system is used for swiped cards. The six tier system has three tiers for swiped cards and three tiers for card not present transactions which is the bulk of ecommerce business accounts.
The lowest rate which a merchant will receive for transaction processing is the “qualified rate”. This is also the rate which the merchant will be quoted when asking for an estimate of the discount rate levels. The qualified rate is also different for the internet commerce merchant than for the retail merchant. The qualified rate for an ecommerce merchant is the rate charged for “card-not-present” transactions which would be the majority of transactions which this type of merchant incurs. The qualified rate for a retail merchant is that which is charged for a transaction where the card is swiped through a terminal.
A mid-qualified rate is usually anywhere from 1.5% to 2.5% higher than the qualified rate. The mid-qualified rate comprises about 15% to 40% of transactions. The mid-qualified rate is the one used when there is anything out of the ordinary about the card transaction. For example, a retail merchant who keys in the information on the card instead of swiping it will receive a mid-qualified rate for the transaction. Rewards cards and similar cards are considered mid-qualified transactions and thus are more expensive.
The third tier of discount rates is the non-qualified rates. They are usually about 2-2.5% above the qualified rates and result from such situations as keying in the numbers instead of swiping the card and not performing address verification. Another reason for the non-qualified rate is using a special card and not completing information for all the fields.
Merchant account providers make the most income from the mid-qualified discount rates, because although the rate charged is increased by 1.5% to 2.5%, the increased processing fee is only .3% to .5% higher than for that of the qualified rate transactions.
Six-tier accounts have the same base rate structure as the three-tier systems, but three additional tiers are added which distinguish between debit cards and credit card. So, the qualified, mid-qualified and non-qualified rates are each divided into two sections, the Debit tiers and the Credit tiers—resulting in six tiers in total.