American Express Merchant Service

American Express Merchant Service is for business owners who want to accept American Express Credit Cards. Accepting American Express cards can potentially increase sales greatly. Signing up for the merchant service allows customers to pay with an American Express Card. This will benefit both your customers and your business.

When you sign up for the merchant service, you can accept American Express cards.

Cost of Becoming an American Express Merchant Service

There is a common theory among business owners that it costs more to accept American Express cards that it does to accept other types of credit cards like Visa or MasterCard. This may or may not be true depending on the price option that is chosen. American Express has two different pricing plans for their merchants:

• Discount Rate – There is no set annual or monthly fee with this plan, and if you manage your account online you will have no transaction fees. You will only have to pay a small percentage of the transactions made with an Amex card. You can apply online and get a price quote for your business.
• 0% Discount Rate Plus a Flat Fee – If you are expecting to have less than $5,000 in American Express transactions each year and plan to authorize, submit, and receive payments electronically, you will pay a monthly flat fee of $5.95. Unlike the Discount Rate you will not have to pay out a percentage of the American Express sales.

Logos and Supplies

American Express Merchant Services will provide your business with visible decals to display to let customers know that your business accepts American Express cards. Here is a list of some of the other promotional products American Express provides to their merchants:

• Business Supplies – Pens, clipboards, and business-card holders.
• Industry Specific Items – Checkout lane dividers, hangtags, and plaques.
• Restaurant Supplies – Coat check tags, tip trays, and check presenters
• Web Logos – Easy to download web logos will let online customers know that you accept American Express.
• Window Decals – Some of the available types of decals include:
  • Business hours decals
  • Push/pull decals for doors
  • Counter displays

How American Express Can Help

American Express has a lot of different rewards programs, which are designed to get consumers to use their card to pay for things and get reward points that they can use to take a vacation, or one of many other options. These rewards will help your business sales grow while prompting customers to spend more. Each purchase a cardholder makes earns reward points that are exchanged for something the consumer wants. Here is a list of some of the places cardholders can spend reward points:

• Travel – Points can be redeemed for cruises, airline tickets, hotel stays, and even car rental. This can help make a once in a lifetime vacation even better.
• Entertainment – You can use your points for fine dining, movies, spa treatments, and even some golf. If you put that together it sounds like a wonderful time for you and that special someone.
• Shopping – You can redeem your points for gift certificates at Home Depot, or any of the many other stores that are in the reward program. You can even use your points to shop online.

Increase Your Sales

If you are reluctant to add American Express to your roster of accepted credit cards then you need to realize that research shows consumers tend to spend more on purchases when they pay with a credit card as opposed to cash. The more opportunity you afford your customers to utilize credit, the higher your profit will most likely be. American Express cards are certainly not obscure and are prevalent fixtures to American wallets. You can be fairly sure that once you start accepting Amex cards you will see these cards used for purchases time and again.

You can accept credit cards without enrolling into a merchant program directly with a credit card company. Companies like PayPal offer merchant services that allow business owners to offer a wide variety of credit cards for both point-of-sale purchases and online purchases. These programs include fees that vary according to your usage and the program you choose. These programs rarely offer the same promotional materials available through programs like the one offered through American Express, but they are a viable option. Contact an American Express business consultant to find out if their program is suitable to your needs.

In Conclusion

With the all of the different programs available to American Express cardholders it is a safe assumption that many will use the card just to get closer to some of the rewards that are offered. Some businesses make the claim to have seen their sales increase as much as 50 percent when they started accepting American Express. This alone is a good reason to consider signing up for the merchant service.

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