One of the things that you are going to come up against when you are looking for advice about merchant accounts is simple: you’re going to find a lot of people who tell you that the best plan is to skip a merchant account and to go with an online payment processor instead. Those who give this advice are going to give you a host of reasons - everything from a lack of monthly statement fees to the chance to “do less research” into merchant accounts. The challenge, however, is that you are going to have to balance out the the risks.

For example, if all you are seeing is that you can avoid merchant account fees by choosing an online payment processor, you need to be willing to take a step back. Rather than just thinking about the monthly fees, look too at the costs of processing each individual transaction. Rather than just looking at set up fees, take the time to understand how the customer support is going to be if you need it; look too at the policies that are put into place to protect your customers from fraud and think about the way in which customers respond to services like Paypal.

In other words, when you’re trying to decide whether or not to skip a merchant account, you’re going to want to make sure that you are looking at all of the elements and information rather than just the upfront promise of savings.