About 30% of small-business customers have not been able to purchase items at the physical store because "their form of payment wasn't accepted," according to a study done by the business technology company Weave. 1 While the inability to accept credit cards isn't ideal for sales, many business owners worry about the cost of processing excessive charges.
Monthly subscriptions can be costly and that's the reason it's important to research your options prior to choosing your merchant service provider. There are more than 1,000 credit processors are available. So how do you decide which one is the best fit for your company? We looked into the credit card industry through 27 businesses and reviewed their services for convenience, user service, and clear fees.
To narrow down the options to narrow the choices, we searched for companies which offer additional services, a variety of integrations, and a high level of reliability. These are the top credit card processing firms according to our thorough examination.
What Is a Credit Card Processor?
If you're a proprietor of a business who would like take credit or debit cards as well as debit card or mobile payment and you're merchant. Merchant processors for credit cards, often known as merchant service providers, or acquirer service providers manage services that allow you to accept credit card payments in your place of business.
Merchants offer software that you can monitor your fees, transactions charges, chargebacks, and other information all on one dashboard. Most business owners have the option to purchase or lease equipment for their business, such as devices like mobile readers and card terminals.
Any business that takes credit cards, regardless of whether it's a retail store or restaurant makes use of a service and devices to process credit card transactions. Merchant services are also able to integrate to point of sale (POS) systems and customers relationship management (CMS) software or accounting software.
While it takes only a few minutes to process payments with credit cards but there's a complicated (and rapid) procedure that requires authenticating and authorization behind the background. Different security protocols are adhered to and the information is sent between the credit card company as well as the bank that issued the credit card.
How Do Merchant Providers Work?
Merchant providers are the middleman service that links everything behind the behind the scenes. They connect with the network of credit cards, the thousands of banks issuing them as well as your banking services. For the highest level of security, the majority of merchants that process credit cards are PCI compliant and employ advanced encryption techniques.
In order to choose the best credit card processing service It is essential to look over your current or anticipated amount of credit card transactions and the locations where your customers pay (online or at the cash register, or on smartphones). Compare companies by examining the cost of processing and evaluating assistance and additional services.
What Equipment Do I Need To Accept Credit Cards?
From a simple Square phone to a stand-alone POS register, the processing device will be based on your merchant service provider's needs, the system you have in place, and how you would like to accept payment. As more retailers offer mobile payment options, you might have mobile payment kiosks or devices at your location and an ATM at your counter to pay.
Even though you don't need any specific equipment to make payments online Some credit card processors will charge different rates for online purchases or require an extra plan to use online services.
What Are the Costs of Credit Card Processing?
Merchant credit providers charge different transaction fees and also offer monthly subscriptions. The most popular fee is the interchange rate. Credit cards such as Visa charge this fee and this fee is then passed onto the customer.
The majority of processors employ an interchange-plus pricing system. This is a fee that includes a portion of the sale which goes to the processor as well as the fee per transaction. The prices vary from company to company, but generally fall within the following rates:
- Monthly charges: $0 to $599 per month
- Transaction charges:0% to 3.5 percent per payment
- Flat-rate costs:$0.05 to $0.30 per transaction
How We Chose the Best Credit Card Processing Companies
To reduce our list of credit processors to just seven, we reviewed hundreds of reliable merchant service providers. To be included on our top seven list, companies must be PCI compliant and accept all credit cards that are accepted by the standard. For companies that handle large volumes of accounts 24 hour customer support was required.
But, we also recognize that entrepreneurs require more than one additional service. Integrations with your application are crucial and that's why we examined processors that allow syncing to your CMS accounting, financial along with POS systems.
We narrowed the list by looking at the cost-to-cost differences between companies that have transaction or subscription fees, in addition to weighing the benefits of other software or services such as the software for managing inventory. We also comb through the data to discover information about processing times as well as the ease of setting up.
