A "Merchant Account" is the type of account you need with a bank if you want to accept credit card payment under your own corporate name. This allows the credit card clearing house to remit payment to your account, and to take payments over the internet you will need a special type of Merchant Account designed specifically for the internet. Obtaining a Merchant Account can be difficult, though many of the difficulties are overstated (frequently by those with a vested interested in steering you in their own direction).

You will find many "agencies" on the internet willing to take advance fees off you and "arrange a Merchant Account". Beware - some of these may be bona-fide, but the majority could well do nothing at all to assist you.

You are better off, in our opinion, to simply approach your own bank and enquire in the normal way about a Merchant Account. The bank will need various documents from you, of course, but they will tell you first-hand what documentation is needed and the likelyhood of success with your application.

If you are in the US, two merchant account providers worth applying to are:

• WellsFargo This is a bank which can provide you with their own merchant account, plus a gateway using Authorize.net. They have an excellent reputation.
• Echo. Again, this is a bank which can provide you with their own merchant account, but they also provide their own gateway as well. Again, they have an excellent reputation.

Integration for both of these is built into Interchange.

In the UK three of the best options are:

• Lloyds TSB Card Net will give you very good rates, but will not allow automated recurring billing.
• NatWest (Streamline) has a very large slice of the European business, and has a lot of experience in multi-currency processing. Application requirements will include business documents. They own WorldPay, but we recommend that you go directly to NatWest and then choose your preferred payment processor.
• HSBC is excellent, and now offer a good range of currencies plus the use of their own processing gateway for internet accounts.

In the rest of the world, there are numerous large banks which will offer facilities similar to those mentioned above. Also, as HSBC are "the World's local bank" with branches all over the world, it is worth finding your local branch and applying there.

If your bank turns you down, then another solution is to use a Bureau, with a "shared Merchant Account". Again, you need to be careful and beware of those who will keep your payments back for too long, or who will charge exorbitant fees for the bureau facility.