The term Ecommerce would earlier confuse quite a few people! It leaves no one stumped anymore. E-commerce is the order of the day! Simply put, E-commerce is the practice of shopping online. It involves making a sale, collecting funds, and depositing those funds into the bank account. All this is done securely.

To carry out sale transactions over the internet, there are a few alternatives or solutions! The choice must be based on what is right for your business.

The first solution caters to businesses that already have a functioning merchant account that serves a brick and mortar store. In such cases you do not necessarily have to get a new merchant account for your online sales, which is only an extension of a business that is already accepting credit cards offline. In such cases you can simply post an order form on your website for your customers to print so that they can fill it out and fax their orders into you. Then, you can follow the same sales procedure as you do in your store, i.e. enter the orders into your credit card terminal. On the other hand, if you choose to start processing payments online, there’s a way to do that too.

A common method is to sign up with a third party transaction processing service. The third part processor works to process the payments for you for a certain percentage of the sales volume and other charges. So, link to the order form of the third party processor from your website and start accepting credit card payments.

Another way for processing payments through a third party processor is by using the telephone service. By means of automated phone systems, your customers can call on a certain number to place their orders. The customer is required to reveal a certain code, which is verified. If the sale is put through, the charges for it are added to the telephone bill of the customer.

There also exists an online check payment method. Using this option, your customers can pay for their purchase by entering the account number and routing number of their checking account on the order form, and then their checking account is automatically debited. Using this method in addition to accepting credit cards allows you to sell to people who still do not believe in using credit cards. Though a very small percentage, these people can yet add to your profits.

Last, but not the least, if you do not want to use the service of a third party processor, then you can open a new merchant account of your own. Although not as simple as it may sound, a merchant account at a bank would be your best bet.

After going through all the alternatives, choose a payment processing solution that is appropriate for your online business.