Businesses are springing up on the internet like wildflowers and the online retail has become an increasingly attractive market to supplement their income. However, in order to be able to make money through those online businesses, it is important to be able to accept not only cash but also credit cards.

By accepting credit cards and the ability to complete credit card processing for purchases on your website, you’ll need two things: a payment gateway and a virtual terminal. Processing payments on your website involves being able to receive electronic transfers of money from credit cards.

When visitors purchase something, the information from your virtual store is sent to the bank account of the person making the purchase, then a secure and encrypted transaction between your bank account and theirs is initiated. A request is sent to the electronic gateway of their commercial merchant account, and the request to transfer the money is submitted. The transaction is approved, the money is sent to your payment gateway, and is deposited into your merchant account. All of this takes under 60 seconds, and is a lighting fast process that is easy and quick.

The beauty of these payment gateways is that it makes it possible for your website to accept electronic payments, as well as make payment transactions. The transactions go through an automatic clearing house, a institution for making secure payments that is interconnected with financial institutions. The credit card interchange processes the transaction before being accepted, and that interchange manages and approves or declines the transactions.

A virtual terminal is a point of sale that is virtual, which allows you to enter the information of the user into the gateway. By entering this virtual information, you are able to effect credit card processing in order to allow customers to make purchases on your websites with their credit cards. For any business that handles purchases via fax, email, or phone, having a virtual terminal is a vital part of being successful in online business. A virtual terminal is basically a form that you fill out as you receive the order from the customer, and it allows you to receive payment approved for a specific transaction requested by the customer.

The beauty of using a virtual terminal in conjunction with a payment gateway is that it allows your customers to shop on your site any time of the day, no matter what time zone you or they are in. Even while you are sleeping, your website can be generating income thanks to the payment gateways that accept online transactions. You can have people working all hours of the day accepting emails, faxes, and phone call orders for your products, and the virtual terminal will help you take all of these orders and do the credit card processing necessary for payment.

OJ Thomas is the VP of Veritrans LLC which is a merchant account provider that provides virtual terminal and online credit card processing services for businesses of all sizes.

Veritrans Merchant Services
1301 Regents Park Dr, Houston, Texas 77058
(281) 474-4144