Set up an Offshore Merchant Account

 A merchant account enables you to process internet transactions on your website. There are a number of ways that you may get paid. For example for large amounts you may decide to accept cheques or bank transfers. If you have become an affiliate for other company’s products they may send you a cheque. Some companies also offer other payment processing options such as faxed order processing or pay pal.

The payment process that you decide upon is crucial to the long term success of your business. Internet sales benefit from the instant gratification that people want. They need information, products and services and if they can get it instantly by paying online they will not wait for another alternative. Thus getting credit card payments accepted on your website is very important.

Why an “offshore” merchant? (Merchant from another country). Firstly, depending on your independent tax advice, bringing in large amounts of money to your country of residence from your website may become legally taxable. With this scenario in mind many companies choose an “offshore” merchant that will process their website transactions and then bank transfer the funds (minus commission) to the company’s offshore bank.

We have provided you with a list of merchants to consider in our Resources Page. We do however, recommend using www.2checkout.com as this company offers a cost effective way to set up your merchant account, and you can just copy and paste some html code into your product/sales pages. However you will need to check their list of prohibited products and services.

Once you have set up your merchant account, you can easily set up your website to accept online payments, all you need now is masses of targeted traffic, and this is a very, very important part of your offshore website business. If you gain huge numbers of targeted visitors to your website and only convert a small fraction 2-5% into sales, you can still make a lot of money. The secret is to learn and apply search engine optimization techniques.

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