1. You must establish a credit card merchant account.
2. You must be able to capture the data from the customers.
3. You must be able to process the data.

Businesses that sell online are called non-retail merchants, meaning their business is concluded with the customer online. As a non-retail merchant, the credit card is not actually placed in your hand and therefore the card is not available for your examination. Because this is a higher risk for banks, the discount rate charged by Banks is higher. The discount rate is the percentage of each sale that the bank charges as per Visa & MasterCard. If your own bank will not extend a merchant account for your online business, there are plenty of places on the internet to locate one that will (www.merchantworkz.com). Thith a merchant account will usually have a payment processing center for your credit card submissions

Your merchant retail accounts are either live-real time or non-real time. If your merchant retail account is live-real time, this means that once the customer places his order and types in his information, it is sent directly to a payment processing center where it is immediately approved or declined, while the customer is online. This is popular because it cuts down on fraud.

If non-real-time, your merchant account will capture the credit card information via a secured form . The business owner will then manually enter the credit information received and submit it to a payment processing center where it is either approved or declined. Hopefully, the business owner will enter these as soon as possible.

To process and capture the orders, you need the right software and there are many. According to industry experts , you should look for at least a few of these features:

Good documentation and support.
Can it import product data from a database file?
Select a program that can handle sales tax and shipping charges correctly and is not limited to local sales and can handle international sales.

Does it offer virtual shopping cart? And will it transfer data securely using SSL?
Does the software allow the customers to check the status of their orders? Can you check the status of your inventory?
Is the software for real-time transactions?

Once the order is placed and the credit card is approved, the amount is then removed from the cardholders bank to the merchants processing bank. The merchant processing bank will then release the monies to your business checking account.

Remember the design of your site should depend on if and how you will sell products online. For more Information, contact a web site design firm.