E-commerce

Can I Sell Products and Services Online?
Can I Accept Credit Cards Online?
What's a Merchant Account?

Can I Sell Products and Services Online?

Absolutely. If your products or services are able to be sold online, then it can be an excellent way to do business. If you look around, it is likely that a high percentage of your competitors already have a website and are actively selling to their clients on the Internet. It is important to consider, however, that your business will be required to re-evaluate its existing prices, taxes and modes of delivery to take into account the different costs involved in e-commerce.

Create Online can offer a range of software based solutions that can be used to sell your products or services on the Internet. For more information, please click through to our E-commerce section.

If you are wanting to accept payments online, then this is the dominant payment method for accepting e-purchases - for Internet sales to consumers to small businesses. 

A merchant account is an account that you establish with a banking agency that allows you to accept credit card payments for transactions. If you use a third-party provider such as Paypal, you do not necessarily need a merchant account to sell your products online. However, if you are serious about e-commerce, establishing a merchant account is in your best interest.

If you already have a merchant account, you may need to acquire an Internet merchant account separate from your in-store merchant account. Some businesses capture credit card order details via a secure order form on their website and then re-key the information into an in-store payment system using Card-Not-Present. This is perfectly acceptable for low volume transactions and can be very cost effective for situations such as hotel reservations.  However, it is inneficient and expensive for any significant level of transactions and is not advised for most merchants.