How to Accept Credit Cards Online

In the old days, to accept credit cards, you needed a merchant account through a bank. But now there are a number of services that will let you accept credit cards online without your own merchant account.

Paypal is probably the most widely used service, with more than 50 million users. Paypal is a great way to get started accepting credit cards, but it's rates are relatively high.

VeriSign operates a competing service that carries a flat monthly rate and a lower per-transaction fee. Called Payflow, this service makes sense if you're planning on a higher volume of transactions each month.

But if you're serious about taking credit card payments online, you'll probably want to go with a merchant account service. Here are just a few of the services currently out there.

Costco

Gotmerchant.com

Instabill.com

MerchantWarehouse.com

MonsterMerchantAccount.com

NorthAmericanBancard

Total Merchant Services