Need some much needed help getting started

so many merchant solutions so little time...

[ba488]

Hey I was wondering if anyone knew what would be the best thing to do in order to setup a merchant account and accept credit cards. Our company has a bank account with Bank of America, should I sign up with Verisign and use Microsoft as the hosting/merchant account? Any post would be helpful I'm simply very inept and inexperienced when it comes to ecommerce, thank you.

[luckychucky]

Look into OSCommerce.
It's a free, open-source eCommerce platform.

[Corey Bryant]

Welcome to the forums ba488!

osCommerce has nothing to do with hosting or merchant accounts actually - it is a shopping cart, a tool if you will to display your products online.

BofA I think does offer merchant accounts and they (I think) have their own electronic gateway (similar to LinkPoint, Authorizenet.com, Verisign, 2000charge, etc).

Microsoft has hosting services / merchant accounts somewhat like Yahoo! does. They do charge a little more for these services unfortunately.

I take it you are in the United States - so you have a lot of choices for merchant accounts. There are hundreds to choose from and thousands or agents to buy from.

It is usually recommended to get a merchant account from a merchant account provider (MAP) because this is their business. A bank is not usually not in the business to process credit cards. They want to loan money to you, etc. Even Chase has a partnership with First Data to process credit cards actually. Plus if you have problems with your merchant account (like chargebacks, etc) your bank might shut down your checking account - they cannot tell the difference between the two.

-Corey

[luckychucky]

True. The nuance I'd add is that with OSCommerce you'd get the merchant interface and shopping cart already nicely integrated with payment modules. BA488 somewhat open-endedly referred to a more general quest for a "hosting/merchant account".