Why Accepting Credit Card Payments is a Must for Your Affiliate Marketing Business

If you are just starting your online business you might have heard that you must offer your customers a way to pay for their purchases with credit cards. But why accepting credit cards is so important today for your affiliate marketing business?

When you sell products online – whether they are ebooks, software or any other material products – you need to be able to offer the most convenient payment option for your customers.

While choosing a payment option, customers look for a convenient, secure and an easily traceable payment method. Credit cards account for around 70%+ percent of all online sales compared to other payment methods. There are a number of reasons why customers rank credit card payments over other payment methods like PayPal, echecks or direct bank transfers.

1. The credit card payments are convenient for the customers and it is processed immediately. E-checks and bank transfers usually take much more time to clear, so the purchase cannot be delivered instantly for a customer. Even though Paypal payments are instant, however, the checkout process when paying with Paypal involves some additional steps to complete. This often results in customers abandoning a product’s checkout page and this way the sale is lost. Credit cards are the most popular payment method because it requires the least efforts from customers to buy a product.

2. The processing of credit card payment is traceable and a customer can track the status of the transaction at any point of time using his credit card account. Unlike echecks or bank transfers, credit card payments can be cancelled and funds can be returned back to the card. When your customers order a product using their credit cards, they are covered with a money back guarantee. In case a customer is not satisfied with a product, the funds can be easily returned back to the card, while e-checks make this impossible.

3. The customers can avail some liability coverage with the credit cards. In case the refund is not issued by the vendor, a customer can still get the money back by contacting a credit card bank. This gives your customer a trust to use credit card to purchase your product.

4. Credit cards can be used directly on your website while paying with Paypal or any other e-wallet requires a customer to register on that system – to have an account. Usually this is the main reason for customers who do not have a certain e-wallets account to abandon your product’s checkout page. A direct credit card payment option converts more visitors into sales.

5. The customers have chosen credit card payments to be most efficient payment method compared to e-wallets. One of the reasons is that many credit card companies offer a certain percentage of fund returns – for i.e. you get 1% money back for your purchases, etc. Moreover customers can earn reward points through credit card purchase which can be redeemed later to win exciting prizes, so they prefer to use this payment method over the others.

Even though I have outlined the most important reasons why customers order online using their credit cards, the best bet is to be able to accept as much payment methods as possible – not only credit cards, but also Paypal and others. This way your customers have a wide variety of payment options available to them and they can choose the one that is the most convenient. In order to accept direct credit card payments on your website along with other payment options, you need to either get a merchant account or signup on companies like Click2Sell.EU (www.click2sell.eu) . Then you will be able to accept not only direct credit card payments on your website, but at the same time you will be protected from many fraudulent orders, online scammers and you will be able to run your online business without any risks. Your customers will be able to pay for their purchases securely, easily and in the most convenient way for them.