How To Setup An Offshore Pharmacy e-Commerce Merchant Account

Owning and e-Commerce business is quite hard. Setting up a website not only requires the skills of a professional programmer, but also the investments in webspace, bandwidth and traffic, technical support, administration and management. The market also needs research, P.R. and advertising. But one of the most vitally important parts of this large complex called e-Commerce is online credit card processing. Things get even more complicated when online pharmaceutical stores are involved.

First of all, the legal issues that emerge when dealing with pharmaceuticals and prescription drugs are hard to come over. When pharmaceuticals are concerned and sold you will have to do with the FDA. When and where prescription drugs are sold is what the FDA wants to know and control. The process of opening a pharmaceutical business, especially online pharmacy stores (for example, Rx Pharmcheap Online Pharmacy), takes a lot of time to legalize and when you have finally managed to settle all the legal issues you may, or surely will, find out that that your type of business, i.e. online pharmaceutical, does not meet the requirements of 90% of your local credit card processing banks; while the other 10% will simply be ripping you off, offering their services at such high prices and rates that a young pharmaceutical business owner cannot afford them. Moreover, it is very likely for an online pharmacy e-Commerce merchant to get a TMF using local credit card processing service (TMF stands for Terminated Merchant File, i.e. the merchant is banned by all local merchant account banks.)

What is left to be done? There are three basic ways out of this situation. These are: getting a high risk merchant account, which actually lets online pharmacy merchants, who are considered high risk merchants, process credit cards without worrying about being terminated due to a high percentage of returns and chargeback cases; applying for an offshore merchant account, which puts thousands of international credit card processing banks to your disposal, all ready to process your online pharmacy business at low rates and on great terms; and, finally, acquiring a pharmaceutical account, which is similar to a high risk e-Commerce merchant account, modified to work with online pharmacy business factors. So, normally you, a pharmacy e-Commerce business owner, would have to choose one of the three options to be able to process credit card payments. Not until recently.

A new type of e-Commerce merchant account for pharmaceutical online businesses is now available. These innovative accounts are called "Offshore Pharmacy Merchant Accounts". Such accounts are a fusion of the options available for online pharmacy stores, combining the best rates of offshore e-Commerce merchant accounts, the best terms of local pharmaceutical accounts and the best policy of high risk accounts.

How are these accounts set up?

An offshore pharmaceutical merchant account is applied for as any other type of e-Commerce merchant account service. Application is done at an e-Commerce merchant service provider's online website, over the phone or at a representative's office. After having contacted one of the providing companies you will engage into a discussion with one of the professional staff members about the offshore bank that suits you. The choice of offshore pharmacy gateway providing banks is usually varied and large. You will usually have to fill in a form of some sort so that the agents can filter out the best banks for you. From there on you will have to choose one, and in a matter of hours (or days, depending on the e-Commerce merchant account provider) you will get all your offshore pharmaceutical merchant account details and information. After you have chosen the right bank the company will issue a bill with all the initial payments, if there are any, which you'll have to pay right away.

The next step in this rather complicated process of setting up your online pharmacy store with a credit card processor is modifying your webpage's HTML and PHP programming code to go along with your new service. This is usually done by a professional programmer, most likely provided by your e-Commerce merchant company, or the gateway bank. The installation fee is usually included in the initial setup fee. Then, you will have to integrate a credit card processing interface for your website visitors, i.e. customers. An online credit card processing shopping cart script stands to the job. There are many shopping cart scripts available, and your offshore pharmaceutical merchant account provider will recommend a few, or provide and install one for you, usually, free of charge.

A great tool for online pharmacy and offshore pharmacy stores are shopping cart scripts with the 'one-click buy' function. The 'one-click buy' makes online shopping at your pharmaceutical resource easier, letting your customers to fill a single credit card form only once. You sales will increase, because buying something from your online pharmaceutical resource will be easy, thus tempting, due to the 'one-click buy' function incorporated in your shopping cart system.

To sum everything up, offshore pharmacy merchant accounts are the best option for pharmaceutical businesses which are still young. Offshore pharmacy e-Commerce merchant accounts make credit card processing easy, safe, reliable and profitable. The rest is up to you – product prices and services, customer support and webpage management. Some e-Commerce merchants owning online pharmacies prefer to switch to another type of merchant account (for example, third-party pharmaceutical) after their online businesses have grown enough and can ensure stable incomes and minimal expenses due to chargebacks and returns. Others stick to and keep on using offshore pharmacy accounts further developing their profitable online stores at a stable rate. It's highly recommended to take advantage of the new and innovative credit card processing solution – offshore online pharmacy merchant account.

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