Establish Payment Account

This step 10 of 25 Steps to Build Your Own Micro ISV

There are a number of online services that will act as a gateway to accept credit card payments on your behalf. They vary along a number of axes:

• transaction costs
• reliability
• fraud protection
• security
• complexity
• support
• trust

They'll also vary in terms of 'features offered'

But as you'll see, a small software business is about the simplest business imaginable. You need almost no features. Accepting payment for software is only slightly harder than accepting a one-off donation.

The vast majority of features that are built into a payment platform don't apply to you. You don't need to manage shipping, inventory control, ordering of parts. Your warehouse is always full.

Any gateway should be able to fulfill your technical requirements. The only real limiting factor (in my opinion) is trust. Which company is least likely to scare your customers away?

h2. Establish Your Identity.

Once you've settled on the payment gateway you prefer, you will need to establish an account with them.

If they are a legitimate company, you will need to establish your identity with them, before they will accept money on your behalf (or at least, before they will pass that money onto you)

There will probably be a snail-mail process required to establish this information.

This step 10 of 25 Steps to Build Your Own Micro ISV