Payment service providers (PSPs) like PayPal, Square, Stripe and the like make this process a lot easier and, in many cases, cheaper than it used to be. Without a merchant account, you can accept credit cards the way many modern businesses do: with a payment service provider.
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How To Accept Credit Card Payments Without a Merchant Account
This is all as complex and unnecessarily expensive as it sounds, so most new businesses skip this step and use an all-in-one payment service provider instead. Then you’d get the necessary hardware to process payments in store or set up the software you needed to process payments online. With the traditional model, you had to work with a merchant services provider or directly with a bank to open a merchant account and negotiate a-usually yearslong-contract to pay monthly fees. After that, the money is deposited into your business bank account. A merchant account is a special kind of bank account that holds your money after a credit card transaction is run and while the credit card network processes the transaction. Traditionally, a business needed to open a merchant account to accept credit card payments from customers. Here’s how to accept credit card payments without a merchant account, so you can avoid this unnecessary and pricey step. But the prospect of extracting money from a piece of plastic in your customer’s wallet-or a string of ones and zeros in their phone-is intimidating.Ī lot of the information on how to do it makes it more complicated than it needs to be-merchant accounts are just one example. Accepting credit card payments has become nearly a requirement to do business.