Securing Online Payments

One has to make sure that his online payments are secured. He should follow a few steps in order to do that. He may start by creating his own website. If he does not possess the adequate web design skills, he may hire a professional web designer to create a custom website. He may also use an online site builder for this purpose. Unique templates and customized websites to specific needs are the benefits of hiring an adept web designer. Furthermore, A web development team can add flash headers or programming needed for the site, making it more lucrative. A custom designed site is a must if one’s company image is critical. On the contrary, an online site builder is a budget friendly approach which quickly gets the job done sacrificing the uniqueness.

The second step involves setting up an e-commerce store. By having an e-commerce shopping cart, one can provide a way for his customers to bring their purchases to the cash register. The chosen program will allow him to enter his product in the database, allowing shoppers to pick products when they click on “Add to Cart”. Well known shopping carts include Miva Merchant and osCommerce which lets you do various tasks like setting/charging tax, billing customers, receiving payments via offline/online methods and most importantly – adding, editing or erasing product categories and related information etc.

The third step is basically getting a merchant account and payment gateway. When customers arrive at the checkout counter, one needs a way to transfer their payments from their credit card accounts to his bank account and the method usually depends on the sales volume. An e-commerce merchant account coupled with a payment gateway will definitely suffice when the sales volume is high. A merchant account provider sanctions the transfer of payments to your account while a payment gateway transfers the information from the customer’s financial institution to one’s. Most of these accounts have setup charge, transaction fees, monthly fees and statement fees. However, the overall cost will be comparatively lower if the monthly sales volume exceeds a thousand dollars. By using a third party credit card processor, one can substantially reduce the transaction fees. For instance, customers can send payment through PAYPAL via money or credit card that they transfer to their PAYPAL account. While the fees per transaction are higher than with merchant accounts, there will be no monthly or setup charges; in addition, there will not be any requirement of a payment gateway. This way, payment will occur only when there is financial transaction.

If one encounter chargeback from a customer while selling online, it can literally mean disaster. Most merchants would not bother going after the customer because of the cost and time to do so. Chargebacks seems to be unstoppable now-a-days, despite all those good fraud services. No matter how efficient a fraud screening service is, there seems to be no way to prevent chargebacks. However, there is one solution which you can avail in order to prevent chargebacks from hurting your bottom line and it’s called PreCharge.

Similarly to Telecheck, Precharge will get pre-approval for a customers charge before the purchase. Precharge will go after the payment on the client’s behalf if there is a chargeback. Only preCharge offers the Guarantee Chargeback Prevention Warranty which means one will not be liable for a single chargeback if he receives a chargeback while using the preCharge certified payment program. It will be there for the client when he receives a chargeback. Precharge certified payments offer a lot of benefits. It does not require user registration and it’s fully user transparent. Precharge comes complete with augmented order processing and complete international transaction support. The experienced and adept staffs are always there to provide professional solutions. Simply put, precharge simultaneously ensures one’s merchant account, gateway and order processing. Precharge ensures that the clients always get the best service. It reimburses eligible merchants for transactions within forty five months. It also carries out extensive research and documentations and feedback activities for the clients’ convenience.

The final step is to create a secure payment environment. SSL (secure sockets layer) certificate enables one to receive secured credit card information from the customers. Some web hosts offer SSL certificates as part of the whole hosting package but they can also be bought separately. By following the above mentioned steps, it is expected that one would be able protect his online payments with ease.