Most high street banks can provide merchant accounts, these are often referred to as acquiring banks. Customers will make payments into your merchant account and the funds will usually be available after three or four working days.

A per transaction charge is applied as a percentage of the sales value (charges vary from bank to bank so it can be worth shopping around), debit cards often have a fixed charge.

All-in-One providers (such as Paypal) are well worth investigating, even as a temporary measure to gain an online trading history which would support an application for a bank merchant account. Sadie Knight

Most merchant accounts act 'behind the scenes' - your customers card details are collected over the internet through a third party Payment Service Provider. There are a couple of exceptions that we are familiar with - HSBC ePayments and Barclays ePDQ.

In order to accept credit / debit card payments online in this way you will have to set up a merchant account, even if you already have an existing merchant account you will usually need to upgrade this to allow for online transactions.

Aquiring banks do have strict requirements for Internet merchant accounts, a thorough credit check will be carried out (which can take up to 8 weeks in some instances) and it is possible that even the bank you use for your current business transactions could initially refuse to grant you one. In these instances one of the All-in-One providers (such as Paypal) are well worth investigating, even as a temporary measure to gain an online trading history which would support an application for a bank merchant account.