August 10, 2005 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Web hosting provider Fasthosts (fasthosts.co.uk) announced on Wednesday that it had launched eMerchant, a merchant solution for businesses conducting online transactions.
The company says the service enables customers to accept online and offline payments from all major credit cards and access the funds instantly.
Fasthosts says eMerchant offers advantages over PayPal, which takes a few days to send funds to a merchant’s bank account and mandates minimum transaction levels.
“PayPal is a cheap and cheerful service for people occasionally trading on eBay. But even the smallest businesses in the online marketplace need to look at the bigger picture,” says Andrew Michael, CEO of Fasthosts. “It is because of their size that they require more financial flexibility and instant access to their revenues ? something that most merchant offerings lack.”
The service, backed by the Bank of Ireland, offers online subscriptions with no upfront charges. Fasthosts eMerchant also includes an application programming interface that enables integration of the online shop with back-office systems. Full protection from chargebacks and counterfeit purchases is available with active fraud monitoring.
