How to Accept Credit Cards

The most common way that a business will accept credit cards is by getting its own merchant account and gateway. These are available from banks and specialist providers, and there is a lot more information about the processes involved on this site.

The alternative is to use a third-party provider. These tend to have lower start-up costs but the per-transaction fees are almost always higher. The main reason to choose this route is if you only wish to make a small volume of transactions each month. There is an entire page on this site about how to accept credit cards without getting a merchant account.