Introduction:

A merchant account is a commercial bank account established by contractual agreement between your business and the banks we represent. A merchant account enables your business to accept credit card payments from your customers.

Having a merchant account and payment gateway helps you store look more polished and professional. Your customers feel more secure when they make purchases because they are using technologies that even the biggest companies like Amazon.com or eBay.com use. In addition, payments processed using a merchant account are done in "real-time". This means that you and your customers will both know immediately if an order is finalized. Customers who are purchasing downloadable products (such as movies, mp3's or software) will especially like real-time payments because they will be able to download their product immediately.

A Card Present (CP) merchant account is used by merchants that receive payments in a physical location where payment is physically presented to the merchant by the customer at the time of the transaction. A Card Not Present (CNP) merchant account is used by merchants that receive payments electronically or in situations where payment is not physically presented to the merchant by the consumer at the time of the transaction. CNP Merchant Accounts are generally used with online eCommerce.

Payment Gateway

A gateway is a service that connects your merchant account to the Internet - sort of like a software based credit card terminal. You need to have a gateway that Mall23 has integrated with if you want to automatically process credit card transactions over the Internet.

Some merchant accounts include gateways, other require you to buy services from a 3rd party gateway like authorize.net or verisign.