The step beyond mail order is trading over the Internet. Although you can collect credit card details from customers over the web to put into your offline or mail order PDQ machine there are some security issues. The following pages cover the various ways of taking electronic payment through a website.

Online trading uses a PSP and IMS so let’s first introduce these terms:

How the Online order process works:

• The customer is not present.
• Customer fills online shopping cart with products and proceeds to a virtual checkout.
• A PSP collects the card details and the total transaction value - you can compare PSPs using our free online payments comparison tool.
• An acquiring bank then authorizes the transaction.
• The card limit is temporarily reduced by the value of the transaction.
• Goods are dispatched and the transaction value is then captured from card.
• Small transaction costs are also charged by the PSP and acquiring bank.

Here is a picture of the components involved in an online purchase:

A standard online shop will have an online catalogue and a shopping cart that you can get by purchasing an e-commerce product to suit your business (costing between £0 and £1000) A web-design company will build this for you at between £1,000 and £2,500 depending on your needs. Your Electronic payments solution will then be ‘plugged-in’ to this shop.

Not all businesses need e-commerce software. Let’s look at the options…

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