In the simplest terms possible, a merchant account is what let's businesses accept payments in the form of credit cards and debit cards. A merchant account may not have been all that important a few decades ago when most businesses operated on a “cash and carry” basis, but it is of the utmost importance for any business that wants to thrive, or even survive in this day and age.

Very few people carry a whole lot of cash around in their wallets anymore, if cash gets lost or stolen – there is no recovering it. If you drop your wallet, whatever money was inside can be considered long gone, there was once a time when there were enough good Samaritans out there that if one actually saw you drop your wallet you might stand a chance of getting it back, but unfortunately those days are gone for the most part.

On the other hand, if your wallet full of credit cards gets lost or stolen you can take the necessary steps to ensure that you are protected. Lost or stolen cards can be cancelled and fraudulent charges will be removed from your record. Fraudulent credit card use can be stopped and once the card has been reported stolen, the authorities will be identified anytime someone tries to use it – there are not now, nor will there ever be such measures of protection available for lost or stolen cash.

With the simple facts covered above, and the overly advertised protection services offered to credit cards users it's no wonder that credit cards have become the preferred method of payment among the bulk of the population.

If a business doesn't have a merchant account, they could conceivably be cutting their potential sales by more than fifty percent. Merchant accounts give convenience and a wide variety of payment choices to your customer – making your business a much more accessible, and therefore pleasing, shopping experience. Customers will remember the fact that they have the options that they need to have as far as payment methods are concerned when visiting a store that has a merchant account and will be much more likely to patronize that business again when they are in need of something.

Merchant accounts just don't give a business' customers more options at the checkout counter; they can also allow a business to potentially take a payment in the form of a credit card over the phone. For an exceedingly busy customer, who absolutely needs to be in and out of a business in short order with his or her order this could be a huge value added service to provide. If a busy customer has a chance to cut their transaction times with your business over another business in half just by making a phone call, then you will most likely win much of that busy customer's business.

In today's marketplace businesses have to go to extreme measures to get any kind of edge that they can over a competitor. Any value added service that one business can offer that another can't makes them a potentially more valuable source for product for any customer. What a merchant account can do for a business is to give them the ability to drastically increase the value added services that they provide to their customers.

Any business that wants to provide the best possible service that they can to any customer that walks through the door could most certainly benefit from having a merchant account. A merchant account, when used to its fullest capabilities is one of the most valuable tools that any customer based business can have.