by : Bailey Thompson

Your monthly sales are up. The demand of is growing, so you produce more. You're on top of the world. What's next? A high volume merchant account.

If your business has monthly volumes costs more than $10,000, then your business is considered as high volume.

Normal dealings

Since you have a business that accepts credit card payments, standard procedure tells you to open up a merchant account. When you have a merchant account, you throw in a couple of cents per transaction that comes in. So the charge in the transaction fees section of your monthly statement depends on how many transactions come in. let's look at the pros and cons, on one side, it feels good to see that you have a high amount of transactions, which means business is doing great. But you will also pay a lot for the merchant account statement bill because of the per transaction fee charge.

Balancing act

Opening up a high volume merchant account can balance the situation. Through this kind of type of merchant account, you will be able to acquire reasonable rates on mid and non-qualified sales, and alongside the other additional fees. What happens is you'll get lower rates for your per transaction charge, so even if you have a high volume sales, you won' get headaches over the transaction charges. Sadly, thus type of business is also considered as high risk because of the high percentage of chargebacks and refunds, so, where do you go to get stability and security, you go for an offshore merchant account.

Reaping the fruits

When you pay lower for your offshore high volume merchant account bill, you will be able to allot more resources to improve your business. Like, upgrading your payment processing software, thus, making the workforce flexible enough to venture into other functions and expand their capabilities. Sales are up, your technical support system is of high-end level, you have happy workers who work harder, all of these results to increase in profit. Everybody happy.

Making choices

Here's what you need to look for the best choice for a high volume merchant account provider:

able to process unlimited volume sales

flexible policies

low rates with no hidden charges

Your high volume merchant account provider should be able to accommodate a monthly bulk of orders. Also, they should be able to link your account to an established bank who will set no limits regarding the daily transactions. If there will be limits, you'll end having unsatisfied customers because they won't be able to make orders because there is a daily quota. Also, you will lose in this kind of policy for you'll experience loss of revenue.

Also, your merchant account provider should be able to offer adaptable clauses. Meaning, the conditions regarding debit processing, monthly statement fees should be in accordance to your specific needs. They should be able to tailor their services to your business' needs, for every business is unique.

Rates being below average doesn't necessarily spell below average service as well. You want to get the most reasonable deals as much as you can, but not sacrifice quality. Watch out for phrases with asterisks at the end for these rates have underlying conditions. Make it clear form the beginning what are the monthly charges you will be paying and if there miscellaneous fees.

Examples of hidden fees or I would gladly like to put as "delayed fees" are:

payment gateway set up fees (for those high volume merchant account that failed to inform you that you need a payment gateway)

merchant account set up fees ( for payment gateway providers that failed to inform you that you need a high volume merchant account)

mandatory fraud-screening fees

per-month minimums

fee for the production and sending of the monthly statement

add-on "gateway" fees

equipment or software upgrading fees

termination fees

refund fees for canceled transactions

You need to always know what you're getting into. Your business is already stable and growing as shown by your volume orders, all you're doing now is staying firm in the business battlefield. Be on guard. Make moves for improvement, not for your downfall.