If you would like to accept credit cards on your website or on a mobile device, you may be wondering if you need a merchant account to process these payments or if you can get by with only a payment gateway. The short answer is: yes, you do need a merchant account.

Truth be told, you can’t have one without the other. So let’s briefly discuss here why you’ll need both a merchant account and a payment gateway, and then we’ll see an overview of how the whole process works.

The easiest way for me to explain exactly what a payment gateway is, is to say that it is like a car that gets your payment from your customer on the internet to your merchant account provider for processing. Having a merchant account itself is like having the license that enables you to drive the car. If you’d like to take the analogy one step further, the garage is like your business bank account. You need all three to accept credit card payments online, but you can’t have a car (payment gateway) without being able to store it in a garage (bank account) and you can’t operate the car (payment gateway) without a license (merchant account). You can have a license (merchant account) without a car (payment gateway), although you can’t operate a car without a license. At the end of the day, you still need a garage (bank account) to store all your stuff, regardless of whether you’re processing online or via a terminal. It’s a silly analogy, but it helps make sense of how everything works together CBD oil merchant account services.

The payment gateway takes your customers payment information and carries it on to your processor. It then carries the approved or denied response from your processor back to you. The processor is the entity communicating with the credit issuing banks to get that response.

Here’s a step-by-step overview of the entire online processing experience:

Customer enters their payment information online and clicks “submit”

Your company’s web server or host securely receives this payment information

Through the payment gateway, the payment information is transmitted to your processor

The processor then communicates with one of the major card networks (Visa, MasterCard, etc.) to discover whether a customer’s payment is approved or denied

The network issues the approved/denied response, communicating that response back to the processor

Through the payment gateway, the processor forwards the response back to you, the merchant. Depending on the response (approved or not approved), your customer either gets a confirmation of payment page or a “payment not accepted” message.
This entire process only takes a few seconds.

If you’re thinking about accepting payments from your smartphone using software provided by your processor or a third party, the steps are almost exactly the same. The only difference is in Step 1, where your customer isn’t entering information into a website. Instead, you the merchant are keying in a customer’s payment information via the keypad on your phone. That information gets sent through the gateway directly on to your processor. The approved or denied response appears directly on your phone’s screen, allowing you to inform your customer whether their payment has gone through or not.

It has become ever so popular for independent recording artists and producers to buy and sell beats online. With this trend comes a lot of traffic from inexperienced artists trying to buy beats online. An inexperienced buyer will easily over pay for a beat online. This article was written from personal experience in hopes of giving some insight, not as a hard set of rules to follow, but a guide. Listed below are things beat buyers should know and understand when buying beats online.

Understand The INTRINSIC Value Of Hip Hop Beats And Rap Beats

You can’t touch, bend, break, fold, or smell rap beats. For that matter, you can’t even see them, yet in the music industry, we see them being sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Oh … but you can hear and fell vibrations from beats, can’t you. This kind of makes music like the wind, so I guess it’s fair to say the music industry is selling “air”… not really, but hopefully you get my point. It’s not the price of the beat but the producer or person you are buying it from.

The actual value of a beat or music is based on an underlying perception of its true value, perception being the keyword. Don’t rip yourself off by buying a beat online for $500 if the producer has no credibility or his or her image and stature in the music industry doesn’t give value to your demo or album sales. Look at what Brittany Spears did on her latest album, take note of the album credits and all the popular “Producer Powers” employed, essentially playing a major part in her attempt to revive her career.

Some Internet Beat Pricing Standards And Averages Buy exclusive beats

The average rate on the Internet for a “Non-Exclusive” beat license is $0 – $75. With this type of license you are essentially leasing or renting the beat for a given amount of time or copies. The average for an “Exclusive” beat license is from around $75 – $250. This type of license gives you full ownership of the beat, as if you created it yourself. More popularly noted as “work for hire”. Note: Some exclusive licenses may restrict resale.

Try To Contact The Producer Before You Buy

To get the most for your money, and protect yourself from “beat-jackers” (people who steal other peoples beats and resell them) try to contact the producer first to see if he or she is responsive, email or PM seems to be the best method. Don’t just buy beats from “Joe Blow” without making some kind of contact first. Trust me, real beat makers who are truly vested in their craft make themselves available and they’ll be happy to hear from you (it builds their ego) and will more than likely work a deal out with you if you buy more than one beat from them. If a seller takes more than two days to respond, keep it moving. There are literally thousands of other producers who will stop at the drop of a hat to make a $20 sale in hopes of repeat business and a little recognition. Try starting off with producers that you see are already selling beats to others on the net or have their beats rated high or “Hot”. Obviously they are doing something right and they are more than likely satisfying other beat buyers needs.

Get It In Writing

When you buy beats online, make sure there is some type of printable licensing agreement associated with the beat you buy. A licensing agreement/contract will explain the rights you have with the beats and the terms under which you may use the beat.

Cheap Exclusive Beat

Cheap exclusive beats are the best deals to get but there are very few producers out there who are willing to sell you an exclusive beat from $20 to $40. Check out thebeattrader for some of those type deals. There are not a lot of producers on that site and understandably so, but the site became very popular for selling low priced exclusive beats a few years ago.

Cheap Non-Exclusive Beats

The next best thing is a low priced non-exclusive. Remember, the catch with non-exclusive beats is that the beat may have been sold several other times before you buy it, so if you are looking for fresh music, make a list of the producers you like on a site and watch their profiles. Good experienced online producers know to cycle out old beats and update their profiles with new beats at least every 2-3 days.

I’d say a fair price to pay for a non-exclusive beat is about $20. There is an abundant amount of producers selling beats online right now who would fight for your business. Online producers are almost a dime a dozen so it’s really easy nowadays to get unique music for your mix-tape, demo, or album at and very affordable price.

You likely figured out how to drive in your mother’s auto going in little circles at 30mph, while she frightfully took up a reestablished enthusiasm for religion from the traveler situate. That is just fine, however it’s not the way you figure out how to really control a vehicle. For over a century now, the best drivers on the planet have sharpened their aptitudes on shut streets and race tracks, where they learn propelled procedures that 99.9{398131a4eb35ea7f95d042bace1556b19f087cec72e96eff97cc1b4b74424a09} of the populace doesn’t have the foggiest idea. There’s no reason you can’t go to a track and see with your own eyes, except if you’re an aggregate wuss about rapid driving, in which case I’m cheerful to separate it for you.

Here are a portion of the demonstrated methods utilized by real race-auto drivers on track that you should hone each time you get in the driver’s seat. They’ll make your spirit sucking drive more fun AND improve you a driver – then perhaps you’ll put your telephone down for two seconds and quit being a threat to society.

Try not to center around the auto before you

In the event that you keep your eyes stuck to the auto in front of you, that is a major no-no. There’s a huge amount of reasons this is perilous, basically in light of the fact that will probably do whatever that driver does. On a race track, that may mean taking an awful line (otherwise known as, following another driver and putting your auto in a terrible position). In reality, it can be more savage. Would you extremely like to confide in the messaging young person before you? Obviously not.

Rather, glance through its windshield and as a long ways ahead as could reasonably be expected

Honestly, you shouldn’t take a gander at the base portion of your windshield all that much. Rather, keep your eyes up and glance through the windshield of the auto ahead – or, if there are numerous vehicles before you, glance through the spaces between them.

Looking a long ways ahead sends imperative data to your cerebrum prior in the diversion, giving it sufficient time to make sense of the correct reaction to a potential danger and send those signs to your hands and feet – which proves to be useful, regardless of whether you’re confronting a self-destructive squirrel out and about or an arbitrary tractor that meanders onto your race course.