merchant card processing

Merchant Card Processing is a service wherein a customer's credit card or check card purchase is authorized (i.e. verified as a valid number, card not known to be lost or stolen) and the purchase amount is deposited in the merchant's bank. Usually additional security features are also provided, such as address verification (which checks a known street number and zip code against the card's billing address) and CVV.

This service is necessary if a merchant wishes to be able to accept credit cards for payment.

Costs

Typical costs associated with maintaining a merchant card processing account:

• a percentage of each transaction (the "discount" or "discount rate"), which usually varies depending on the type of credit card used
• a per-transaction fee, usually around 30 cents per transaction
• setup fee, which varies tremendously from company to company; can be anything from no charge to hundreds of dollars

Articles

• Card Processing Terminology

Card Processing Services

There appear to be hundreds if not thousands of brokers of these services; a few are listed below.

• Cardservice International
• directNIC