I have found, through experience, that is best to offer as many different kinds of payment options as you can to your customers. We do accept credit cards at our online store: ToothyGrinsStore.com
There will be some customers who want to use paypal, some google checkout and there are also those who will want to use a credit card.
As a merchant or seller it is your job to accommodate your customers to the best of your ability.
There Are Customers Who Want Pay By Credit Card
There seem to be people who will not view your site as legitimate unless you take credit cards.
There is actually some logic to this.
In order to accept credit cards, you need to have a credit worthy business in order to setup a merchant account which will initially be based upon your personal credit rating.
Which Credit Cards Should You Accept
You should accept as many kinds of credit cards as you can or that you find reasonable.
Some people love to use American Express, others love to use Discover.
Most people have a Visa or MasterCard, but often they prefer to use their Discover due to the cash back programs involved.
It has traditionally been more expensive to the Merchant to accept Discover card but that appears to be changing.
Credit Card Fraud
For online merchants it is particularly important to protect yourself against online fraud.
There are several ways to do this.
One of the best ways is to set up your system to require that the person puts in a security code. This is the 3 or 4 digit number that each card has that is NOT part of the actually credit card number.
By requiring customers to put this number in you are protecting both them and yourself (as the merchant). The security number helps to insure that the person has the actual credit card in their possession.
When you here of theft of credit card information, the thieves may have the actual number and expiration date of a card but they will NOT have the security number. This means that if someone stole a credit card and tried to use it at your store to get free merchandise, they would have a hard time pulling that off without the security code.
Shipping Fraud
There has been a scam going on for quite a while where the scammers try to get you to agree to them using their own shipping provider. In order for this scam to work, they have to place a large order or it would not make sense for someone to send their own shipping company in. In this case, they try to get you to pay some sort of fee for the shipping that they will then ‘refund’ to you.
Obviously, you never want to get involved in this type of transaction.
Teletype Relay Fraud
Due to the laws in certain states of the United States, many scam artists have learned to use the Teletype Relay systems that were designed for the hearing impaired.
The reason they can get away with this is due to the strict rules that regulate these systems. The operators, even if they are aware that there is a scam in progress are forbidden to say anything or make any comments about the call whatsoever. They are only allowed to relay the information of the conversation back and forth regardless of the content.
Some of the scammers will use this method to hide the fact that they are not native English speakers. They will also attempt to make you feel sorry for them because they are deaf.
Interesting Notes About Credit Card Numbers
American Express was actually the original credit card and system created. Therefore, American Express cards all start with the number “3”.
Visa has become a much larger system but came after American Express, therefore those credit card numbers all start with the number “4”
MasterCard credit cards all start with the number “5”.
Discover, is the relatively late comer to the credit card world and therefore, those cards all start with the number “6”.
I hope you have enjoyed this article as well as the others here on All Things Pondered. In any case, please leave a comment below to let me know what you think.
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