Okay, so you need to set up a Credit Card
merchant account with your bankers. If you have been rejected, do give up. The
banking fraternity has yet to embrace e-commerce whole-heartedly in this region.
However, with the recent establishment of Commerce Service Providers in Kuala Lumpur and
Singapore, ordinary business will be able to enjoy credit card facilities at their web
site to enable e-commerce.
So how does it work? Credit card
processing requires a "Transaction Processing Clearing House". How do you
communicate between receiving your customers' credit card numbers and the clearing house.
The diagram below provides a brief explanation as to the whole process:
There are basically 3 ways in which your
credit card transactions may be processed:
Credit
Card Swipe Machines
This will be the typical credit card swipe
machines which you see at nearly every retail outlet. The cashier will swipe your credit
card through the machine, wait for a couple of seconds for the approval from the clearing
house. In this scenario, you will receive the credit card information from your customers
via the Internet and you will key in the information on the credit card machine (instead
of swiping). This option is not too convenient. It's designed more for signature slip
processing which is irrelevant here.
Desktop
Software
This software is typically used for mail
order, phone order and of course, Internet order transactions. The merchant will
accumulate the credit card information of customers for a day or two or three depending on
transaction volume. You will then enter the credit card numbers and transaction amount
onto this software, and transmit the list via modem to your designated clearing house. The
clearing house will then respond with a list of "good" and "bad" cards
i.e. transactions accepted and rejected. This method is reasonably good unless you have a
large amount of orders whereby you should migrate to:
Realtime
Web Site Gateways
The main difference of this method to the
others is that the customers' credit cards can be evaluated immediately while he or she is
online and hence bypasses any processing by the merchants themselves, saving possibly
valuable time. The customer will receive a final receipt online and the merchant can
safely deliver the purchased goods immediately with relative peace of mind.
Previously only available via the United States, you will now be able to utilise this
service from acquiring banks in Malaysia and Singapore.
