For some reason many people think everything is different, if they do business over the Internet. This is wrong. The Internet is just an additional sales channel - albeit a very powerful one. So accepting money from a customer who has added products to your shopping cart is no different to accepting money from a customer who orders a product from you by telephone.

You can ask people to send you a check, money order or to transfer money into your account. Or you can offer them Cash On Delivery or use any other payment method you can think of. Of course you should be satisfied that the selected payment methods meet your security requirements.

Accepting credit cards is a little more complex - as it requires you to have a special bank account. This bank account is called a merchant account. Talk to your bank to find out if they can provide you with a merchant account which allows you to accept credit card payments, or ask them who can. Some banks will require you to have a special Internet enabled merchant account.

Your merchant account provider will also be able to tell you which cards you can accept. MasterCard and Visa are the most common cards used around the world.

If you run an existing business, you may already accept credit cards.

Ask your bank, if this account may be used to do business over the Internet. If they don’t allow you to do this, just talk to another bank.

An other alternative to accept credit cards, if you can not get a merchant account yourself, is to work with a company such an payment service provider, such as GlobeCharge, who will be able to point you in the right direction. Or you can look at PayPal, which is supported by GlobeCharge, and which also allow you to except credit card payments.

These services can automatically approve payments on your behalf when you sell online, saving you the time to have to do this manually after receiving an order (see Accept payments in real-time)

Shopping cart software such as ShopFactory automatically integrates with many payment service providers, making accepting the money online easy. The customer adds products to the shopping cart, an order is created, the customer provides payment details, the payment service deducts the money from their credit card and eventually passes it on to you. And presto, you have the money.

Alternatively the credit card details can be stored and you can verify and approve them yourself by contacting your bank after reviewing them.