Savvy business owners realize that accepting credit cards over the phone can help them increase profits and expand their reach. Customers love convenience; they are more likely to shop at a place that gives them various payment options. If a customer can pay for products or services over the phone with their credit card, it makes them more likely to spend money at your establishment.
Getting dressed up, putting gas in the car and taking a drive out to a physical location takes time and planning. Oftentimes, people put off making purchases because of these obstacles; as a business owner, it makes sense to remove obstacles that prevent customers from making purchases. When you set up a phone payment system, all a customer has to do is make a simple call; you make your products easily accessible.
How Do You Get Started?
If you want to accept phone payments, you need to set up a merchant account. A merchant account provides you with a way to facilitate customer transactions. When a customer places an order, the merchant account processes the payment; after the payment has cleared, the money is transferred into your account.
Merchant accounts charge a fee for every transaction, but the fees are small when compared to the growth and profit that come along with credit card processing. If customers don’t use credit cards for your services, you don’t have to pay any fees at all.
When your merchant account gets approved, you can set it up to process orders over the phone. Accounts that accept phone orders have many options to choose from; you can make your services available 24/7, or you can limit them to only be approved during a certain time. It’s up to you to decide when you will accept orders; phone accounts are very flexible. When you create a phone account, you can have customers punch in their credit card number, or you can have them use a voice option instead of keying in their number.
Accepting credit cards over the phone gives customers easy access to your products. By paying a few cents for every transaction, you dramatically increase your sales volume and exposure. A merchant account is a simple way to implement technology to help your business thrive.
Disclosure: This post was written by Charge.com Payment Solutions, Inc., a trusted provider of credit card processing solutions for businesses. To set up Internet merchant accounts for your business visit the company website.
