What is Real-time credit card processing?
Real-time credit card processing allows your Web order pages to immediately submit your customer’s credit card information via the Internet to your merchant account bank for authorization. Real-time authorization is useful if you anticipate a large volume of online transactions or wish to provide your customer with immediate access to your product or service. Example: Selling a piece of software that a customer can download immediately after their credit card has been authorized in ‘Real time’. Real-time credit card processing functionality can involve additional costs beyond standard processing which include: additional service fees from your merchant account provider bank, additional software requirements for real-time processing, customized ordering pages created for your Web site and/or Web server payment gateway software configuration and setup. Some careful research and planning is recommended before launching a Real-time payment system on your Web site to determine the total cos
Real-time credit card processing is when a user enters their personal information along with their credit card information into the order form and they get a response as to if their credit card was accepted or rejected right away. Most merchant account and software combinations allow for this but some do not so make sure if you want to do this that yours has the ability. The other option instead of real-time credit card processing is manual credit card processing. What this means is if a user enters an order at midnight then it would go into a queue, which you would then have to check in the morning. If the order looked legitimate you would then process the credit card. Doing the credit card processing manually just adds another step in the process and the more steps there are the more chances there are that a mistake will be made.
