If you already process credit cards in your brick-and-mortar store or over the phone, then you probably already have a merchant account. Check with your bank or merchant account provider to see if your current account supports internet payment processing.

Once you’ve added internet processing to your current merchant account or found a separate internet merchant account provider, you’ll need to add an online payment processor.

ProStores is integrated with a number of the most popular online payment processors – also called gateways. Using one of these processors saves you the time or cost to do the programming necessary to integrate a gateway. We’ve done all that hard work for you.

Another option is to use an all-in-one merchant account and gateway solution like PayPal Website Payments Pro or Quickbooks Merchant Service – both of which are also integrated with ProStores.

PayPal offers another way to process credit cards called PayPal Website Payments Standard.  This is the default payment method enabled on ProStores – all you need to do is add the email address associated with your PayPal account and set up your PayPal preferences in ProStores and PayPal will then process your customers’ credit card or PayPal payments on their site. The trade-off is that the customer is taken off of your site to complete payment before they are returned to your store to complete checkout.

So, while you probably want to set up one of the methods above to process credit cards on your store in real time, offering PayPal as an additional form of payment has been shown to boost sales by up to 14%.*

Probably the main drivers of which solution makes the most sense for you are fees and convenience.

If you already have a merchant account and are doing a good volume of business – simply adding an online payment processor is probably your most cost-effective option.

If you are just starting to sell through your own web store and have an established online business – perhaps on eBay – an all-in-one solution, such as PayPal Website Payments Pro, is a great way to start accepting cards on your store and enhance the professional image that having your own store gives you.

And if you’re just starting out online, PayPal Website Payments Standard offers your customers a fast, safe, easy way to pay you – and offers you a no-monthly-fee option.

You can compare the costs of these various solutions with this handy calculator from PayPal.

Whichever solution you decide to use, ProStores offers the convenience of integrated setup for you and safe, secure payment processing to your customers.

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* Q1 2006 PayPal phone survey of small and medium sized businesses doing a minimum of $120,000 in annual sales online