I know many of you have more than one store set up through . I have several more in mind that Id like to set up this summer.

Can you share merchant services across the sites? I use authorize.net. I hope I dont have to go through the hassle of setting up with each store, but Im not sure of how the merchant service provider views it.

Thanks!

Hi SRG -

I believe different payment gateways have different rules on this.... some allow multiple sites to send in authorizations, some don't. If I'm not mistaken, I believe authorize.net only allows one site to connect to the account... I would double-check with them to be certain. Here's a list of all of the payment gateways the cart is compatible with:

2Checkout
Bank of America
Epay USA
iBill
Linkpoint Basic
Linkpoint API
PaymenTech
PlugNPlay
SkipJack
VeriSign

Hope this helps!

Brad

Thanks Brad. I'll look into further with authorize.net as I cross that bridge.

srg, I use authorize.net and was told I'd need multiple accounts, one for each store.

I thought I would point out something about using the same merchant account for more than one store.

Since we will all be insanely successful with our store(s), it is probably best anyway, to keep everything entirely separate (all accounts, bank accounts, records, accounting etc.), because you never know when you may want to sell just one of your sites to someone.

Treating everything as its own entity, will make selling any online store much more appealing, and easier, later on.

Tony

This is spooky, but I came to the forums to post on this exact topic!!

When I opened my second store I was told by a staff that I didn't need another account with authorize.net. I was told just to enter all the same information into the settings of the admin panel.

I was operating under the assumption that my DBA name was the account and that my websites were just part of that one account. I mean when you get down to it, what difference does it make? I have a business that sells my products through two different websites. Different web address same company name..

Last Friday I had contacted Bank Card Services by email for a couple issues. They informed me that they had no record of my second website and I would have to contact the provider for that website(which is actually them).. Hence I came here to find out what to do..

Now what? I want to do everything legit..

I thought it was weird when I read in this section that Authorize.net said you can't have two web sites feeding in to the same merchant account. This is because I asked just this question when setting up an internet merchant account with Authorize.net. I called Authorize.net and asked if we can have two web sites using the same account because both web sites were owned by the same company. They said no problem. So now, I am confused too. Does it just depend on who you talk to at Authorize.net?

p.s. We have not tried this as yet because the other web site is not ready but I asked for future reference.

it seems to me.. in my case to be redundant. All the paperwork would be identical except for the website address.

The only think I can think of is that the merchant account (not authorize) has certain requirements such as a phone number, physical address, credit card graphics, shipping policies etc. that are required content on your website. Your merchant provider would have your first store approved for this content while second and subsequent stores would not be inspected .....

We have 3 sites we just condensed into 2. A retail, and a distributor site. I called to find out if I needed a second authorize.net account and was told no. The one account would be fine.

But, that is selling the same type of product on both sites.

I know of a really cool, easy to talk to guy at authorize.net, if you want his contact info, pm me.

When I set up my merchant account I was told that it didn't have to do with the gateway, it had to do with Visa. I was told that Visa put forth some rules that basically say "2 web site addresses, 2 merchant accounts"

The issue I would see would be losing your ability to process Visa cards because Visa pulls your account for not following their rules.

Troy

It would sure be nice to get a definitive answer on this one!

I bet it's Visa/MasterCard's policy.

We have three merchant accounts for one store. We're required to have one for the store, one for the web, and one for phone/mail orders.

In the past we had only one, but they changed all that for us in January. Very nice people at Visa/MasterCard. They llke to keep things simple for us.

Patti

One other thing reason to have multiple merchant accounts is to have the actual site name for each site come up on the customers credit card statement. If you have two sites pointing to one and the site branding is different, you could be inundated with charge backs...

I'm using Authorize.net too and currently implementing it for two different websites. I don't have any problem so far. The name showed on the credit card record which my customer would see is my company name, not the website domain name.