In order to take credit and debit card payments you are required to have a merchant account. The merchant account type you will require depends on how you trade. Iridium can supply you with all account types at competitive rates.

Iridium has negotiated special terms with a number of UK and European acquirers. This means we have grouped together the traffic and processing volume of Merchants across the group to obtain greatly reduced rates. By signing up for an Iridium Merchant Account, you will qualify for these reduced rates for as long as you remain an Iridium Merchant. Iridium can also obtain pre-approval for certain groups of Merchants, thereby speeding up the application process. Even if you currently have a Merchant account with another provider, please feel free to contact us for a quote.

The type of Merchant Account you will need will depend on how you trade. If you have both a physical shop and an online shop, you will need two types of Merchant Accounts, each carrying different fee structures. The fees vary for different account types due to the associated risks involved with particular types of transactions.

A Cardholder Not Present (CNP) account is traditionally associated with mail order companies, where the cardholder's details are recorded through call centres or via mail order. The Merchant is present at the time of transaction, but the cardholder is not. You will need a CNP account if you have a major sales channel whereby your orders are taken via the telephone or mail order.

An Internet Merchant (IM) Account is needed if you plan to take transactions through a website or other similar electronic means. Neither the cardholder or the Merchant are present at the point of transaction, which increases the perceived risk associated with transactions taken this way.

The key benefit of using Iridium Merchant accounts for both your traditional high street business but also your online business is that all the accounts will be going through our central gateway. The transactions processed by all your sales channels can be viewed in real time. All data is immediately available to be imported into your accounting systems. This gives you an unprecedented ability to monitor the income from all your sales channels.