: Is a merchant account a requirment for a website to take payments I have had a quick look but couldn't see anything related. Basically, if we were to accept payments for events on our website,

@Jamie184

From this site, Merchant Accounts are used as a payment processor to accept money and deal with refunds and charge backs. You can go with third party payment processors like Paypal, Nochex, Dwolla or Google Checkout instead, but the costs vary. Generally if you're going to be accepting a lot of payments it's better to go with a dedicated merchant account service than a third party as it will save you money, but no, you don't explicitly need one. It might be an idea to go with Paypal/Google until sales volume suggest better returns.

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@Sue5673885

Not always you can check google checkout or yahoo cart and other options like alerpat.. or GO pay. Merchant accounts though are more reliable and give better rates

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@Shelton105

Merchant accounts act as an intermediary for collecting money. It would be like an EFTPOS system if you were to own a shop front. For EFTPOS you need a merchant account who collects money on behalf of you, usually a bank or visa/mastercard.

A regular bank account for Paypal.

Merchant accounts can be setup through banks or other 3rd party providers.
Most 3rd party providers, provide web portals for handling transactions, without the web designer having to create it themselves. You will have to provide a point back to yourself to indicate if the transaction was successful or not so the transaction can complete.

Depending on the country, merchant accounts are not that difficult or expensive to setup.

I suggest that your talk to your bank first, then to a 3rd party online merchant transactor. I think your bank could provide you a list of reputable online merchants/payment services.

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@Shanna517

You only need a merchant account if you're going to be processing credit card transactions—whether by a wired/wireless credit card terminal, by credit card slips, or by an online payment gateway, then you need a merchant account. The merchant account is basically just a bank account that can receive credit card payments.

If you're using PayPal standard, then you're not actually processing any credit card transactions or receiving credit card payments. PayPal is the one who does all of that, and you get the money from them after they've processed the payments and received the money from the customer.

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@Kristi941

No. If you're using PayPal's Payment Standard or Payment Pro options, you're more or less piggy-backing on their merchant account. (That's probably not quite technically correct; but the important part is that the answer to your question is "no.")

The Payflow Gateway option does use your own merchant account(and has a different fee structure), but it doesn't seem that's what you're doing.

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