Free Online Merchant Accounts VS Paid Merchant Accounts

An online merchant account is a special account that enables merchants making online transactions using debit or credit cards. With an increasing number of merchants opening online businesses, the presence of online merchant account is quickly becoming a necessity.

There are a great number of merchant service providers in the market. When choosing a merchant account provider, people usually take into account costs associated with it. These costs are usually high and vary from provider to provider. High service costs tend to deter a number of web-based business firms from opening these accounts. To attract more clients and therefore to increase their business, banks and other merchant account providers are constantly inventing new business strategies. One of such strategies is a free merchant account. To make the right choice when deciding on a free or paid account, one should learn the differences between them.

Merchants having free accounts do not pay service providers any membership charges or set-up fees. Thus, there is no need to pay money to register with the account provider, and all set-up guides, as well as payment gateway information is given for free. A great number of merchants consider free merchant accounts to be more beneficial than paid ones. Though these accounts are free, they are not perfect and have a number of disadvantages as well. Therefore, before opting for free or paid account it is necessary to consider all pros and cons associated with them.

Unfortunately, nothing comes for free nowadays. Each underpaid service will be definitely compensated by overpaid one. Consequently, the same happens with free merchant accounts. Its only benefit is that merchants get an account without paying for it. The disadvantages are numerous however. High processing and chargeback rates are the most common disadvantages you will get opening a free merchant account. These rates will cost you more that costs associated with paid accounts.

By doing simple comparison, one will easily determine the difference in charges. Let’s assume that an average merchant, using free merchant account, pays his service provider $1.00 +5% of the whole transaction amount for each online transaction. Thus, if a customer wants to buy an item worth 100 dollars, he or she pays 100 dollars, but a merchant does not get the entire amount, as his/her merchant service provider takes a percentage for the transaction and then the remaining amount is deposited on a merchant’s account. Thus, a merchant loses 6 dollars on every $100 transaction. It is quite clear now, that total income from one $100 deal is equal to 94 dollars. It is a fact that some merchant account providers charge rates as high as 14 dollars on free accounts. Contrary to this, charges related to paid or commercial accounts are much smaller. It is quite evident now, that it is possible to get higher profits, and greater savings through using commercial merchant accounts.

Lack of customer and technical service is another disadvantage one will get, when opening a free merchant account. This means that online businesses have to compromise on stability and security of their transactions and payment getaways.

To the contrary, commercial merchant accounts offer their owners a number of benefits. They provide secured transaction getaways to customers and offer lower processing rates. Very often banks offer rewards on transactions made via paid accounts.

Therefore, when choosing an online merchant account, one should consider the needs and requirements of the business.