Credit Card Machines 101.com: Buying guide to credit card terminal & check reader equipment

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About Merchant Accounts

A merchant account is a business bank account that consolidates transactions from credit cards, debit cards, electronic checks and other payment-processing providers. Opening a merchant account lets you accept virtually any form of payment from your customers. The cost of opening a merchant account has come down substantially over the years. There two main types of merchant accounts, don't assume that your bank will offer both types:

Retail merchant account. This is the traditional merchant account where you do business in a retail location that swipes customer credit cards at point of sale, obtains customer signatures, and issues printed transaction receipts.

Internet merchant account. This is a separate merchant account for businesses that do not have a physical location and do their business transactions over phone or over the Internet via an ecommerce website. In this type of transaction, no physical credit card is presented at time of sale, nor is a customer signature obtained. For these reasons, some banks are more wary of issuing Internet merchant accounts due to a higher perceived threat of credit card fraud occuring.

Sellers of credit card machines