Finding a third party credit card processor is one of the most important things you will be required to do for your commercial web site. Without a merchant account or third party processor you will not be able to take credit card payments effectively which will gravely get in the way of your sales and profits.

In order to accept credit card orders swiftly and efficiently online you will want to choose a 3rd party credit card processor. There are a number of alternative third party processors for you to consider. Most will charge a start up fee and a part of each sale.

Unlike regular bank-issued merchant accounts, most third party credit card processors don't levy a monthly fee or gateway fee and a few can cost nothing except for the per-transaction fee. However, the per transaction fee will be higher than the equivalent fee deducted if you were to process the transaction via your own merchant account.

Let us examine some of the frequently used third party processors:

Paypal is one of the most popular 3rd party processors. One of the reasons for this is the fact that they do not charge a start up fee. It is also very easy to place the PayPal purchase HTML code on your website. In fact, PayPal will help you create the "buy now" button for your products in their merchant admin area. All you need to do is copy and paste the code into your website. Paypal gives great information for this and will also offer subscription and shopping cart options for your clients. It is well known but is also has some problems. There are limitations on certain territories with pay pal. This type of processing is good to begin with but try to have an alternative third party processor as backup for your clients in different parts of the world.

World pay has a small set up payment but it is good for global enterprises. It offers similar services as paypal.

The alternative to 3rd party creditcard processing is to obtain a full blown merchant acct and process creditcard orders in your company name. This will take longer and could involve other fees such as monthly account charges. The decision as to whether or not to go for a full merchant account or use a 3rd party processor is simply a question of working out which would cost less money.