How to Decide Whether You Need Real-Time Credit Card Authorization for Your Site

by Dr. Ralph F. Wilson
Web Commerce Today, Issue 1, August 15, 1997

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This article contains older information. Go here for newer information on shopping carts and transactions.

Real-time credit card authorization may be the right thing at K Mart when you're in the check-out line. The clerk is bagging your purchases, and you're ready to walk out to your car and put them in the back seat. But for your web store, what's the hurry? What if your inventory happened to be low? What if you couldn't ship for a week?

Real-time authorization (see our shopper's guide to real-time Web credit card authorization for WCT subscribers) can cost more than batching processing your credit card sales using desktop software such as ICVerify (http://www.icverify.com) or PCAuthorize (http://www.tellan.com), typically adding monthly fees as well as transaction fees beyond the normal bank processing fees. On the other hand, real-time authorization can save you time hand-entering the transaction information into your desktop processing software, and time is money. Another option is to set up your web store ordering system so it can be ported directly into mail order management software such as Mail Order Manager (http://www.dydacomp.com) which has an optional module to processes credit card transactions as part of the fulfillment process.

Of course, if you have software, or a subscription, entertainment, or information to sell online, then you'll want to provide for immediate, real-time credit card authorization, since your "product" can be "shipped" immediately.

Since implementing real-time credit processing adds another layer of complexity to setting up your web store, be sure it will benefit your business enough to pay for the extra expenses and hassle involved.

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