Merchant accounts have emerged as top solutions in online payments. It is the merchant service that enables you to have secure financial dealings online. This service enables your companies to accept Visa, MasterCard, American express and other credit cards. These products reduce your need to maintain a credit card account or maintain accounts receivable, helping you save money. The merchant account service providers enable you to have better cash flow and improve your customer service.

Internet Customers choose the Merchant products and services through the shopping card facility over the merchant websites. However, the shopping card connectivity to the payment gateway is the backbone of seamless online transactions. Merchant accounts acts as one of the most secure, reliable, cost-effective systems for authorizing payment and managing transactions. It acts as an effective method to manage the difficult, complicated, and expensive infrastructure and systems.

The process usually adopted in a typical retail purchase on the internet is as below:

- The customer has to fill his shopping cart on a merchant website and proceeds to check out.

- The transaction information is then transmitted to the merchant server.

- The web merchant forwards a digital order to the company server in an encrypted format.

- The company authenticates the merchant and provides a payment options and payment details screens directly on the customer's browser over a secure connection.

- The customer provides his Credit Card details, which is directly sent to the payment server.

- The Credit Card details are then forwarded to the respective bank for authentication. A message is then transmitted by the bank to the card holder issuing the bank for payment authorization. The issuing bank authorizes the payment and transmits the confirmation back to the payment gateway through the acquiring bank.

- On receiving authentication and authorization, the company forwards the validation of the payment instrument to the merchant server.

- The merchant transmits the acknowledgment of the payment to the customer's browser.

The entire process integrates seamlessly with the shop and buys application of the web merchant ensuring a pleasant shopping experience for the customer. The Credit Card details of the customer remain unknown to the net merchant.