Author: Lisa Kaye

Credit card processing has become a crucial necessity for businesses, but does that always guarantee profits and benefits?

In case of large businesses, the chances of making profits through credit card processing are better because 45%-60% of their transactions are credit card transactions. This may sound quite unfair but larger businesses tend to get good discounts from credit card companies. This is mainly because large businesses have a bigger number of transactions and this means more profits for the bank and Credit Card Company.

Simply not having a merchant account is not the right solution for small businesses. It may keep a lot of potential customers away from doing business with you. After all, you can’t deny the importance of convenient customer services. Yet, for small business, a merchant account sometimes seems to be working only for the good of customers and the banks, but not the business itself. However, what you can do to gain more profits is lower your business expense by lowering your merchant fee. Never thought it was possible? It is.

There are several ways to avoid high merchant process expenses while benefiting from the merchant services at the same time. Let’s take a look at what you need to do in order to make your merchant account work for your profits.

• The very first thing is to avoid luring merchant service providers who know nothing about your business. Don’t just go for their discounts in first month or zero start-up slogans. See if they really have a package that suits your needs and business in the long run.
• Try to lower your credit card fees by batching out your sales everyday. This helps because the transactions which are not processed within 24 hours will have more processing fees. So, doing this everyday will help greatly.
• Go for uncomplicated flat rate pricing. Other pricing systems tend to complicate things and confuse the merchants with a lot of hidden cost and terms. The flat rate is so far the best pricing system where the rate does not change with the volume of transactions.
• Ask for discounts, whether you are big business or small business, your transactions are going to get some profit for the credit card company. Without you the credit card companies won’t be able to do much business either. So, it won’t hurt to ask for discounts and most of the time, you will get some.
• Swiping equipment may cost you, but swiping a credit card is more cost effective. The merchant companies and banks charge a much lower fee for card swipes rather than manually entering the data. However, before if you are a company that delivers like a restaurant or dry cleaner, or a mobile business a wireless terminal or smart phone app will decrease your fees exponentially a wireless terminal, you must keep the number of on the go transactions and nature of your business in mind.
• Keep track of your monthly transactions and keep printed receipts and records along with their useful customers’ details. In case there is an error, the customers will have to call you or the credit card company. If they call the credit card processor, you will have to pay a fee. So, its better that you are able to provide them information they need.