Accepting online payments
Introduction
For many small businesses, accepting payments online provides some major benefits. Customers increasingly expect this facility and it can improve your cash flow significantly.
It's easy to accept cheques or invoices for your online sales and to process payments in the traditional way. However, because buyers often use the Internet for a speedy service, most sales are paid for with credit and debit cards. To accept cards online, you will have to make special banking arrangements.
Online payments using cards are "card-not-present" or CNP transactions. There are higher risks of fraud with this type of payment and banks require you to operate within a well-defined set of rules and accept a higher level of commercial risk than a conventional swiped card transaction in a shop.
This guide will help you to understand these requirements and look at the options available for taking advantage of online payments.
Subjects covered in this guide
- Introduction
- Online payment jargon
- Selecting the best online payment option
- Setting up an Internet merchant account
- Find a bank to process your online payments
- Checklist: applying for an Internet merchant account
- Using a payment-processing company
- Selling through an online shopping mall
- Here's how I set up an online payment system for my website
Actions
- Read a guide to online payments at the Electronic Payments website - Opens in a new window
- Use our interactive tool to investigate what kind of website is best for your business
- Manage your personal list of starting-up tasks with our Business start-up organiser
- View local and national events linked to this topic
- View grants and support schemes linked to this topic
