I have a client with an existing gift shop at their museum. I'm building the on-line version, and thus needed a different merchant account from their existing one. Their banker in St. Louis, Bank of America, said that they'd set it up, and a few days later she said it was done, and sent me a page of information. She also said that I then had to contact Authorize.net, which I did, and the guy from their asked if I had filled out their forms, which I hadn't.

I would have thought that BofA would have done their own merchant accounts, and I do see them listed in the payment processing area of MC, though the fields listed don't coincide with the ones I was already sent.

The museum dealt with BofA so I'm unclear if they've already signed something, or what the fees might be, though I just sent the question of fees to the Authorize.net guy. Could BofA be outsourcing their merchant accounts through Authorize.net?

Hi,

Hmmm, that's interesting. It's possible that the branch your client went to only deals with "swiped" type merchant accounts and not internet accounts. Or, they could be just using Authorize.net as the gateway but not doing the leg work for you in entering all of the B of A info into Authorize.net's setup page. My suggestion would be to find out if B of A is giving you the merchant account or if Auth.net is. If B of A is your merchant service provider, I would recommend they do the leg work for you in setting up Auth.net. Setting up your gateway can be tricky and complicated so they should really do that for you.

Hope that helps,
Julie

I posed the question and got back:

Authorize.net is the Secured Gateway for the card transactions and Bank of America is the Processor. All Internet merchant set-ups that will be processing credit cards must have a secured Gateway. This is a standard procedure. I hope I answered your question. Please feel free to call me.

So it seems that they are just using Authorize.net as the gateway afterall.

Thanks for your info. I have a BofA account and wanted to know how to keep it. Your post was helpful to the "T".