With the advent of widespread internet use and ecommerce paying by credit card online has become an everyday occurrence for millions of people around the world. The problem faced by merchants who run ecommerce stores is how to integrate a credit card processor into their store so they can accept payments online. There are many credit card merchant services available to handle all the online transactions and rates and services vary according to the risk involved to the processor. When considering a payment gateway you should consider some of the following:

• What are their rates?
• Will they handle transactions for high risk industries?
• Will they transact outside of your country of residence?
• What are their security services like?
• How do they handle chargebacks?
• What cards do they accept?
• Monthly fees?
• Do they have plug and play shopping cart integration for their transaction services?

In Japan, there are a couple of online processors such as www.remise.jp but everything is in Japanese, and they require you to have your Japanese site as the first page before they will consider your application. Needless to say if you are looking for international markets you want to have a processor which will handle transactions from all countries, and have good security and rates. Paypal is an obvious choice but their Japanese support is very limited. Advantage processors handle all types of cards and work with high risk areas. Authorize.net is an established company in the field.