1. Is it risky to accept checks as I know some people refuse to pay with a credit card?

It is very important that you should accept checks as a form of payment as you will be able to serve those customers who don't have a credit card or who are over limit. This adds an extra avenue of increasing your sales. There are extra services you can have with accepting checks see below for more details.

A service you will want to check out is check guarantee. What Check Guarantee does is it will pay you back any money if a customer writes you a check and it for some reason bounces. You will be able to enter information into your terminal or online software and it will look up the check writer, usually their driver licence number. Check Gurantee checks a large database of bad check writers and it processes this information instantaneously.

If the check writer has had a bad history with writing checks in the past it will decline the transaction and advise you to not accept the check. Then you should ask the customer for a different kind of payment option.

Check Gurantee costs about 1 - 3% of the sale. If you recieve an approval code eventhough the customer was declined doesn't mean there is money in the checking account. It just means the check writer doe snot have a history of writing bad checks.

The other option you may want to consider is Check Verification. The difference between Check verification and check gurantee is that verification will check to see if the person has a bad history of writing checks but it will not reimburse you if a check bounces like Check Guarantee will. This service only costs less then 50 cents per tansaction. So you pay less but take on more risk.

General Information

1. What exactly is a Merchant Account and do I really need to have one?

2. What other options are available ?

3. Is it necessary to accept credit cards ?

4. When I make a credit card sale how do I get the money ?

5. Can I apply for a merchant account at a bank ?

6. When looking for a merchant account provider how do I find the right one?

7. What information do I need to provide to set up a merchant account?

8. What is a high risk processor what makes them risky?

9. I plan to open an online store what must I know about processing credit cards online?

10. If someone wants to make a check payment on my site can I process it?

11. How do I implement the payment process on my website?

Fees/Expenses

1. What other fees are involved not listed on the site?

2. Are there any other fees you aren't mentioning on the site?

3. Why are American Express and Discover more expensive when they aren't as widely used like Mastercard and Visa?

4. What kind of fee does American Express and Discover charge?

5. What is the best price to pay for a digital terminal or software?

6. I don't have very much start up cashflow but would like to start right away what should I do first?

7. What can I do to prevent chargebacks and credit card fraud?

Risks and Safety

1. Is it risky to accept checks as I know some people refuse to pay with a credit card.

2. If I decide to accept checks what other pertinent information should I know first?

3. Is it possible to accept check payments on my website?

4. How safe is it to accept credit card payments over the internet? Is it really secure?

5. How can i reduce the risk of accepting bad or fraudulent credit cards?

More Information

1. If I already have a terminal is it possible I can have it programmed with my new merchant account provider?

2. Am I able to process Foreign, Government or Corporate credit cards?

3. If I have a retail business is it a good idea to accept debit or check cashing cards?

4. What is real time processing and electronic terminals? How about software?

5. Virtual terminal? What is that exactly?

6. Does a virtual terminal allow you to process checks?