Accepting credit card payments through your website is an absolute essential part of doing business on the Internet. If you're not accepting online credit card payments and processing orders online, you're losing a massive amount of business.

Many businesses still accept cheques, or invoice customers for online sales and process payments in the usual way but this is not an ideal way of trading online. Customers prefer to use the internet for instant payment via credit or debit card or via other online payment accounts like Paypal etc.

To accept credit / debit cards online additional arrangements would have to be put in place over. All businesses trading on the internet require a Payment Service Provider (PSP) whose role is to securely capture a cardholder’s card details and pass these onto the merchant’s acquiring bank for processing.

The card details and result of the authentication are passed by the PSP, using a secure payment link or integrated payment page to a merchant’s acquiring bank who will pass these onto the card issuer to seek an authorisation. The authorisation is passed back from the acquiring bank to the merchant via the PSP.

To start accepting payments online, you will need a Merchant Service Agreement with an acquiring bank and terminal that connects to the acquiring bank to process a card transaction. This can be either hardware (like a chip & PIN machine) or software – a "virtual" terminal.

The terminal provides an authorisation when a transaction is processed. This confirms, that the card used has not been reported as lost or stolen and that there are sufficient funds available in the cardholder’s account to make the purchase.

A bank will manage your card payments (for a fee); placing the money or funds into your merchant account, typically within four working days after the transaction has been processed.

Another option to start start accepting credit card payments through your website almost instantly is using third party payment processing companies. There are many professional companies online that will enable you to accept credit card payments through your website without a merchant account.

These companies are known as third party payment processing companies and provide an invaluable service for home based businesses.

Most companies will enable you to accept all major credit cards and electronic checks. Some companies will also provide telephone billing and recurring billing for paid subscription and membership sites.

There may or may not be a set up fee and there are usually no monthly fees. Some companies charge a "percentage" and a "per transaction" fee. While others simply charge a set percentage fee per transaction. They will process your orders and send you payment for all your orders processed, minus their fee and a reserve fee.

For more information about online credit and debit card processing visit http://www.servebase.com