Accepting Credit Cards
It''s practically impossible to sell anything on the internet without accepting credit cards. Other ways would be bank transfer, cheques etc. but how inconvenient and slow ways they are. Credit cards are fast to pay with.
What Ways Are There to Accept Credit Cards?
There are two ways and they are pretty plain and simple:
1) Your own merchant account
2) Merchant account service
What Kind of Merchant Account I Recommend
For beginners I would like to recommend having a third party merchant account service. It's the way to get known with these things.
This saves you from hassling with creating a bank account for your business, setting up the scripts for payments and most importantly, the biggest responsibility of money transfers. With a third party merchant account you are not the one who takes care of the money, you can sit back and relax.
A good thing about own merchant account is that all kinds of fees are lower and reflects that you are a of pro in the business.
I Want a Third Party Merchant Account
Sometimes these come integrated with the web hosting plan. If you don't have such a service, you can use external processor. A good and popular one is PayQuake. It is easy to get, fill a form, get approved and you are ready to.
You don't have to worry about payment things after getting this service, they take care of it.
If you have a small online store selling just a couple products, you could use PayPal for free. It also offers a handy shopping cart function, if you need one.