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Your business can't survive without payment processors, as they are the means by which your customers will pay you online. You will need to set up a merchant account using one of these services.

What is a merchant account? It's a system set up on your website to accept payments. This allows all your buyers to pay conveniently online. It is important to your business that you provide a secure payment page where buyers can pay for their purchases with a credit card. A wide variety of merchant accounts are available to you. It is wise to give your customers different payment processors, as well.

Different fees There are many different kinds of payment systems. Some of them will charge you a monthly fee, while others have a set up fee and then a fee for each payment. Before entering into any agreement with a company, be sure you look into their policies. Some of these companies charge a large set up fee and other payment processors may have monthly fees that you may not be aware of when you first apply. Six month or one year terms are common, so you might get locked in. Try to be careful of these factors, as this could create a problem for you in the long run.

Who is out there for me to pick as a payment processor? When you are looking for one for your online business, Paypal, Clickbank and 2checkout are cost effective, easy to use and simple to get set up on a regular business website. With these three systems, you don't even need to know HTML to set them up. These are all known as 3rd party payment systems.

What do they do? The buyers will be transferred to a secure page to use a credit card to buy your products and services. There is no need, therefore, for you to go to any page to set up a secure site. Now there are some advantages to using 3rd party processors.

1. They offer mutual convenience to you and your customer as they accept credit cards. And when 80 to 90% of all transactions are done online, you can see how important this is. 2. They allow you to have more than one processor and do not demand that you only keep theirs... All these payment processors mentioned above have simple instructions, tutorials, and good support for fast and easy set up. 3. If you have any problems with fraud etc. they will handle the situations for you. 4. You can use your own bank for receiving payments from your buyers.

Setting up a payment processor:

Just go to the home page of any of these payment processors and you can see their tutorials and instructions on set up There are many different tools offered.

Shopping carts are a good way to go when you have many products you are offering on your site. They are like a virtual grocery cart. Shopping carts are convenient and will encourage multiple buying. This system will work well for stores online and sites with multiple or bundled products.

Of course, each payment processor has it's upside and downside. Paypal is a good way to go and I always recommend it. It gets the money right into your account where it is accessible.

Clickbank is a good choice to have an affiliate program in place in your business. It will cost you $50 to set up an account but they pay every two weeks and are very reliable.

2Checkout has been used by many marketers. They have a very good reputation. All charge fees so do a little scouting for the best prices.

Dan Farrell is a full time publisher is now offering a free subscription to his his popular ezine, Build An eBusiness On A Shoestring. To sign up with free bonuses, go to: Home Business