...continued from page one of A Canadian Perspective

Ecommerce and more accurately Canadian ecommerce differs from American ecommerce greatly when it comes to areas like transaction processing.

If you want to sell online, you will eventually need to learn about payment processing and merchant accounts since you need a way to accept money from your customers. What you may not know is that getting a merchant account for a Canadian business is much like applying for a mortgage in terms of complexity. Merchant accounts are not just doled out in Canada like they are in the liberal US banking climate. In order to have an ecommerce website that is reaching its maximum potential you will need to accept credit card payments in a secure and professional manner.



In order to accept credit card payments you will require a merchant account, which is a bank account dedicated for the purpose of receiving and storing transacted payments, and well as a payment gateway which is the software engine that allows someone to type a few magical numbers into their computer a thousand miles away and have money show up in your bank account. In addition to these two items you will also likely require a shopping cart software which will allow customers to browse your store and select items. All of these programs must be compatible with one another for the whole equation to work.

Since the vast majority of shopping cart software, merchant account providers and payment gateway engines are not compatible with Canadian companies, it is easy to see how so many people waste so much time trying to understand how a new Canadian ebusiness is ever supposed to get off the ground.



All of this information does not even scratch the surface of what you need to know to be able to sell online. This is one random obstacle that you will need to cross at one point or another. Search engine optimisation alone is complicated enough to keep you reading for the rest of your natural born life in attempts to completely understand it. If you do not understand search engine optimisation then the simple fact is that you will never realize the full potential of your new online business because no one will ever find it.

With so many interacting variables it is little wonder why so many people become overwhelmed when they decide to research starting a new ebusiness in Canada. But now more than ever Canadians are learning how to derive a long term and stable income from the internet in market that is growing exponentially.

Read more from Steven Goodale is his Canadian eBusiness Blog or return to the ebusiness article directory here.