The world moves by pretty fast, and it only seems to go quicker every year. As the years pass and technologies advance, people become more and more accustomed to these new conveniences. They also become less and less willing to go back to the older, slower ways of doing things.

One thing in particular that travel merchant services rely on with ever-increasing frequency is their ability to pay for goods and services by using their credit or debit cards. And if they happen upon a business that only takes cash, odds are they are simply going to make their purchase elsewhere.

By setting up a merchant services account you can finally level the playing field between your business and the rest of the competition. Just about every business can benefit from signing up for credit card processing through merchant services. Here are a few ways that it could help your business.

Swipe Terminals

The most common way for a business to process credit cards is with a retail swipe terminal. Obviously this isn’t something that would be practical for an online business, but if you have a “bricks and mortar” storefront it is pretty much essential these days.

A swipe terminal is the machine you see on the counter at pretty much any retail outfit. You just swipe the card through and your merchant account handles the rest. They take the payment through a series of complex transactions and the money is deposited into your account in about two or three business days.

One of the nicest things about processing payments by way of a retail swipe terminal is that they tend to have the lowest fees. This is because studies show that credit card fraud is a lot less common when dealing in face-to-face transactions. If you are still worried you can always ask to see ID when you accept a credit card.

Debit Card Processing and E-checks

Merchant services are also great for businesses that do a lot of their transactions over the Internet. Nearly all of the purchases that happen online are made with a credit or debit card and there are plenty of other websites that can process cards if yours can’t.