As a small business looking to accept card payments, it is crucial to understand what a merchant account is, why it is needed and how it works.
A merchant account is an account that holds the trader’s money from their card sales before it transfers to their business bank account. The movement of these funds are automatically transferred between the accounts and can typically take 2-3 business days to happen.
Why is this needed and why can’t we use a normal business account? The difference is a merchant account is there to store all card payments in one place and helps work out what the card fees are before it is transferred to the business bank account.
Merchant accounts and card payments go hand in hand. A Merchant account can be supplied directly from the bank or from a Payment Facilitator. A payment facilitator (like Square) will have a master merchant account with an acquiring bank and thus will be able to simply sign-up small merchants themselves.
This makes the signing up process for a small business extremely easy, quick, and convenient. Whereas the onboarding going directly to a bank can take a long time with stringent contact restrictions. Many acquiring banks work with facilitators.
Small businesses often benefit from very good payment technologies that payment facilitators offer once signing up. One of the new technologies for small businesses is TapOnPhone, often referred to as SoftPOS in the payment industry.
TapOnPhone is a new small business game changing technology which allows merchants to accept card payments directly off your mobile phone. WIZZIT Digital works with acquirers to enable this technology for small merchants.
With implementations touching several continents, we continue to look for acquirers to work with and provide the best in class technology to their merchant base.
Please get in touch to find out more about TapOnPhone and how WIZZIT can help small businesses and acquirers move to the next level of acquiring.
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