My Merchant Account Blog

Choosing a United States Merchant Account

Friday, April 14, 2006

If you are in the United States and need a merchant account, you have hundreds of merchant account providers to choose from. And the large independent sales organizations (ISO) and merchant services providers (MSP) usually use agents to sell their services. This way they do not have to employ people to sell the services and the agent works when he / she wants to.

The first thing to look for in a ISO / MSP is to determine if they are actually an ISO / MSP. An ISO / MSP will usually look something like this :

Copyright© 2004-2009 CDGcommerce, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
CDGcommerce is a registered ISO/MSP for First National Bank of Omaha, 1620 Dodge St., Omaha, NE - Member FDIC.

This tells you who actually owns the company and what acquiring bank is used.
An agent of an ISO / MSP will look something like this:

Copyright 2005-2006 Cardservice International All Rights Reserved.
FDIS Illinois States is an independent agent office of Cardservice International.
Cardservice International is a registered ISO/MSP for the following FDIC-insured banks:
First Financial Bank, Englewood, CO; Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., Walnut Creek, CA.

It tells you who the ISO / MSP is and it tells you they are an agent.

Here is another example (Sam's Club)

©2006 First Data Merchant Services Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
All trademarks, service marks and trade names referenced in this material are the property of their respective owners.
SAM'S CLUB© Merchant Credit Card Processing is a registered ISO/MSP of Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., Walnut Creek, CA.

A lot of companies partner with First Data to offer merchant services.  First Data is one of the largest transaction processors in the world.  Companies like Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Dick's Sporting Goods turn to them for all their processing needs.

You always want to make sure it tells you in the footer what company it is, if it is an ISO/MSP or an agent and who the acquiring bank is.  If it does not, chances are that it could be a third party processor and you won't have your own merchant identifier or the bank / company might not be located in the United States.

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