The technological advancements released in the
recent past especially wireless communication and internet in particular can
enable a willing buyer and seller meet online; conduct the whole transaction of
selling and buying online from any place without interacting physically. Merchants
can now sell both on retail or wholesale their goods and services by using
credit cards online. Some of the products that can be sold online include books
and other publications, softwares and real estate. Some of the services that
can be sold online include knowledge or expertise where a professional or
expert can guide a learner online. For most of these transactions to be actualised,
the merchant service provider usually has an ecommerce website.
The backbone behind these financial transactions
is the use of credit cards
online to make the payment. The merchant service provider posses a merchant account with the acquiring bank. The merchant
can pursue the procedure directly to have the agreement with the acquiring bank
or use a merchant account reseller to link the business to the bank. The
merchant usually has an online shopping cart on the e-commerce website. An online shopping cart is a piece of
e-commerce software on a web server that allows visitors to the merchant’s
website to select items for eventual purchase. The shopping cart software is
used to make a website's product catalogue available for online ordering,
whereby visitors or the prospective customers may select, view, add/delete, and
purchase merchandise.The online shopping cart allows online shopping customers
to accumulate a list of items for purchase.This is referred to as placing items
in the shopping cart or adding items to the shopping cart. When the customer checks
out, the software typically calculates a total for the order, including
shipping and handling (to cater for postage and packing) charges and the
associated taxes, as applicable. The software typically provides a means of
capturing a client's payment information. For clients using credit card the
merchant relies on the software module of the secure gateway provider, in
conjunction with the secure payment gateway, in order to conduct secure credit
card online transactions. Some simple shopping carts strictly allow for an item
to be added for the checkout process to start, however most shopping cart
software provides additional features that an internet merchant uses to fully
manage an online store.An online shopping cart normally has two components
namely: the storefront and administration back end. Store front is the area of the web store that is accessed by
visitors in this case the customer to the online shop. Categories, products,
and other pages like search are dynamically generated by the software based on
the information saved in the store database.
The look of the storefront can normally be changed
by the store owner so that it merges with the rest of the merchant’s web site.Administration backend is the area of
the web store that is accessed by the merchant to manage the online shop. The
amount of store management features changes depending on the sophistication of
the shopping cart software chosen by the merchant, but generally a store
manager is able to add and edit products, categories, discounts, shipping and payment
settings appropriately.For security of the transactions,the PCI security standards have regulations set in
place to safeguard payment account data security. The council that develops and
monitors these regulations is composed of the leading providers in the payment
industry like American Express, Discover Financial Services, MasterCard Worldwide
and Visa Inc. They define the best practices for storing, transmitting, and
handling of sensitive information over the internet.
About the
author:
The Merchants Solutions understand the grow need
for online
shopping cart.
We have therefore improvised several ways to enable merchants accept online
payments.
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