Merchant Accounts &
Payment Gateways

Ecommerce Merchant Account

In order to process credit cards through your online store, you will need a Shopping Cart Merchant Account and a Payment Gateway.

Shopping Cart Merchant Account

Ecommerce Merchant Accounts are simply commercial bank accounts that allow you to accept credit card payments. There is a transaction fee, which is a percentage of each purchase. The percentage is based on volume. Higher volume accounts have a lower transaction fee percentage. There is typically a minimum monthly fee, sometimes called a statement fee, of around $20. This would come from a 3rd party such as your current bank or one of our recommended partners.

Payment Gateway

A payment gateway allows your online store to connect to your ecommerce merchant account. It acts as a virtual terminal, as opposed to a card-swipe terminal. There is typically a small transaction fee and a monthly fee for this service. Shopping cart merchant account providers typically resell this service from a 3rd party, or you can use one of our recommended partners.

Example Transaction Scenario

A customer places an order on your store.
AmeriCommerce contacts your payment gateway over an encrypted SSL connection, providing your account information and the customer information.
The payment gateway sends this information to your shopping cart merchant account.
Your merchant bank contacts the credit card issuer bank for your customer and gets authorization for the amount of the order, while verifying address and other information.
Your merchant bank returns a response to the payment gateway, which returns a response to AmeriCommerce, which will either mark the orders payment as approved or declined.
At the end of each day, the payment gateway processes all payments automatically to deposit the funds into your merchant account.

Our Recommended Partners