Signing up for a Credit Card Merchant Account
To apply for a merchant account, you'll need a few pieces of pertinent information. In order to qualify, you'll need a U.S. business address and a U.S. bank account to accept credit cards. Keep in mind that home-based businesses are acceptable but you'll need to provide the merchant with that address in order to be approved to accept credit cards.

Additionally, you are responsible for providing the credit card merchant account company with a Federal Tax ID number or your social security number. An estimated amount of monthly credit card sales and the average dollar amount for those sales will also help the merchant account provider put together an account that meets your needs. Once you've obtained this information, you can often find credit card processing companies who approve merchant accounts over the Web.

How Long Does it Take?
If you are applying for an Internet merchant account you will be notified almost immediately if you have been approved or declined. If for some reason you haven’t been approved, there is no need to worry. Many times the reason the account was not approved is because there is a need to verify some of the information that was entered on the online application. This is commonly due to spelling errors or typing errors made while applying. Because of this it is very important to review all of the data you enter and check it for accuracy. This will help to ensure your account is approved more quickly.

If you apply for a retail account it usually takes a couple of days longer to get setup to accept credit cards. This is because the application for a retail account doesn’t go directly into the computer system the way an Internet account does. You can usually expect it to take approximately a week to begin to accept credit cards with a retail account and 2 to 3 business days for an Internet account.

Open a credit card merchant account today and start earning more money… call 888-760-1700 to have all your questions answered right now.