Everyone knows that if you start accepting credit cards and your sales and profits will start growing. It’s a given, whether your business is internet based or ‘bricks and mortar’ right?

Well yes it should be true, but the one factor that can seriously affect this is the quality of your Merchant Account Provider. Pick the wrong one and you could have serious problems.

The 3 most important things you need to know to pick a good credit card merchant account are:

1. Merchant Account Providers don’t charge standard rates despite what they may say. The rate that you finally get charged depends on many different factors.

Many merchant providers will offer what seem to be very low rates but these are often just an introductory rate to encourage people to sign contracts.

2. A lot of Merchant Account Providers demand that you sign a contract over a long time period. Often people find that these contracts have hefty charges if you want to end them early. It’s important to look for accounts that don’t require a contract for example rolling on a month to month basis.

Another common occurrence in long contracts is a low level of service because the company knows they can get away with it.

3. Make sure you know exactly what kind of support team they have. It isn’t all the same. At some point everybody needs to contact their Merchant Account Provider for support. Make sure you choose a company that has separate teams for sales, customer service and technical support.

If you ensure that they have this level of support, whenever you have any issues you’re back up running again and making money ASAP.