Third Party Merchant Billing Account

What is a third party merchant account?

What is a third party merchant, and why would a business find it necessary to have a third party merchant account? A third party merchant account is necessary for certain types of businesses that accept and receive credit and debit card payments for products and services provided to their customers. Certain types of businesses that do an usually high volume of business, or is a type of business that banks and merchant account providers consider somewhat risky, or is a start up business, or where the owner has bad credit, etc., use third party billing accounts to process their credit/debit card billing needs. Third party merchant billing accounts are generally not accepted for any "high risk" business.

A merchant's ability to accept payment via credit, debit or check cards is needed by all successful businesses. Most 3rd party billing account providers will offer 3rd party gateway processing options to the business owner like:

• Virtual Terminal, where the business logs in to a terminal site and enters the customers information to process the charges.
• Credit/Debit Card Processing, where the business can accept all major credit/debit cards.
• ACH Check acceptance, where the business will be able to accept checks.
• Electronic Check Conversion, where the business can convert check transactions into electronic ACH transactions eliminating the need to go to the bank everyday to make deposits of checks received.

Other services many third party processing services can include for additional fees:

• Recurring Billing Services.
• Wireless Transactions.
• Fraud and Risk Management systems and protection.
• Shopping Card Integration with business website.
• Batch Processing and Bulk Uploading services.
• Status Transaction Reporting.
• Transaction encrypting, and more options depending on the 3rd party merchant provider.

If you are having problems creating your own merchant account due to the costs involved, there are companies called third party companies that are willing to help you get the account you need. There are numerous third party companies that can offer you good rates, unless you fall under the "high risk" category. Applying for a "high risk" account is not easy, and if you do get accepted, you will be charged very high rates.