We've published quite a few stories about getting your merchants up and running on the Web. In fact, we assumed that ISOs would be rushing to bring merchant processing to their existing customers before some outside organization took this opportunity away. Many of our stories have focused on businesses that already have credit card processing agreements and who wish to add the web to their business.
Now there is a company advertising directly to the retail world, and they will probably find some takers who may be one of your current accounts. American Merchant is the first credit card merchant service provider to sell their services on the web. Businesses can purchase a merchant account, web page, and real time on-line processing for $495. If you want to know more about this, check out http://www.millenniumnet.com, or http://www.americanmerchant.com/.
Now if that wasn't reason enough to get you moving, then how about the fact that even retail associations are beginning to try and get in the game? Now The National Retail Federation (NRF) has jumped on the bandwagon through a partnership with StoreSite. With this alliance, the NRF now has an e-commerce web site development and hosting program for retailers.
Offerings range from simple storefronts to sites with fraud protection, back-office systems integration, on-line transaction processing, and full sales reporting. Prices range from $1299 for a turnkey transaction site to $100,000 for more extensive sites. For merchants who are ready to jump right in, billboard web sites (really a brochure site) can be purchased for $199 per year.
As we have been saying, if you don't offer your customers web solutions, someone else will.
