Accepting credit cards is a vital part of any online business. Although South Africa is far behind the rest of the world, offering EFT as your only form of payment is no longer enough. With that in mind, it's important for you to know what your options are. Here is a short outline of some companies in South Africa that offer online credit card processing.

Pay Gate

These guys offer a pretty standard service and you will need to have a merchant account with Standard Bank.

It's generally recommended that you have a programmer on your side if you choose to use this company. The last time I worked with them, their support was good but their solutions weren't quite as easy to implement as they could have been.

iVeri

This company works through Nedbank and offers very similar services to PayGate. I generally wouldn't recommend a company like this to a small business that is just starting out as it will require more resources than you are likely to have at hand.

Setcom

This company is, by far, my favourite online credit card processor. They've been around since 1999 but have recently started a similar service to PayPal.

In essence, they allow you to charge credit cards without having a merchant account. This means that you can get up and running much faster as it can often take over three months to successfully applied for a merchant account at one of the major banks.

Another wonderful benefit of using Setcom is that they make it super easy for you to add "Buy Now" buttons to your web site.

On top of that (yes -- there is more!) you can sign up for free right now and be up and running within a couple of hours. No other provider that I know of offers this.

There are plenty of solutions that you can consider that Setcom is probably your best bet as a small business.

Pricetag

Unlike the other companies have mentioned so far, I have had no firsthand experience with this company. They come highly recommended by an associate of mine. Their web site looks really good so I recommend you check them out before making a decision.

If you're not selling online, you're leaving a lot of money on the table. People want to buy your products now, not tomorrow. If you're not set up for e-commerce, they'll simply take their business to your competitor.