I’m a big track and field fan, so you know what part of the Summer Olympics I’ve been watching. As the owner of an online business I enjoy watching the competition, because it reminds me of what I face every day competing in the virtual shopping mall.

One of my favorite events is the hurdles because I enjoy watching the precision movements of the athletes. They almost seems like their moves are choreographed and they also remind me of what I face daily, and how I have to make sure I’m doing everything I can to overcome what the competition, the market and the economy put in my way.

However, I also notice one thing a hurdler does not do is place extra hurdles in their path, which is more than I can say for many of my peers in the e-retailing field. They make decisions that make doing business unnecessarily hard. For example let’s look at credit card processing.

Probably the biggest hurdle any online business owner can put down is not getting set up to accept payments online. With billions being spent annually by online shoppers every year, and 80 percent of everything bought online being paid for with a credit card, it is the height of folly not to have an ecommerce merchant account capability.

However, simply being able to process credit cards does not make any business person’s path automatically smooth. Choosing the right merchant services company also needs to be done thoughtfully and carefully to avoid taking a tumble.

Possibly the second-largest hurdle that is self inflicted is choosing from among the so-called discount providers. They will brag about their low rates but they don’t talk about their seemingly endless list of fees just to establish service (hurdle), the impossible-to-qualify parameters to get their discount (hurdle) and the others fees buried in the fine print they never mention (hurdle).

The smart way to go is to consider some of the established players in the credit card services business. One way to identify those companies is by their lack of upfront fees and their short approval cycle. The best, for example, do not charge an application fee (a savings of around $300) and can make a decision within approximately 24 hours. They can also usually have you set to process your first transactions in that same amount of time upon approval.

But before you apply, take a look at your business. Someone who sells expensive Victorian antiques can probably do quite well if they make 3-4 sales in a week. A department store wouldn’t last a month on that volume of sales. So if your site is more like the former you can handle a higher per transaction fee, while the latter would need a lower fee so they didn’t liquidate their profit margins.

And the final hurdle you want to avoid is not being perceived as trustworthy, and this is again a place where dealing with a top-flight provider is going to make a difference. They will be able to provide a secure virtual terminal (an Internet-based portal used for processing card transactions) and a safe payment gateway an e-commerce application that authorizes payments for e-businesses

The bottom line here is to not give any customer than comes to your site any reason to take their business somewhere else. And if you have shoddy credit card processing, or no merchant account services, that’s exactly what will happen.

With the economy in flux and consumers feeling the far-reaching affects in the rise of gasoline prices, one major U.S. bank is getting pro-active with credit-card holders it deems to be at-risk.

According to the San Francisco Business Times Wells Fargo has sent letters to card holders the bank feels may be in danger of falling behind on their payments. The letter is not a warning or a slap on the wrist – to the contrary it offers help in the form of setting up automatic payments, coming up with a plan to pay down a balance, or putting them in touch with a credit counselor.

While some Wells credit-card customers may be miffed about getting one of the letters – the bank would not disclose what the parameters were for a customer to be on the mailing list – some disgruntled cardholders might be a small price to pay for avoiding costly delinquencies.

The bank has ready access to some members’ financial situations as many of those with a WF credit card have their accounts with the bank.

And Wells officials may be smart to be moving pro-actively. According to the Federal Reserve and the FDIC, charge offs (the point at which a creditor writes off an account balance as a bad debt) on credit cards increased in the third quarter of last year.

Some banks have also moved to lower cardholder’s credit limits, theorizing that if they do have problems paying their bills the outstanding debt the bank is carrying will be lower. However, the move has hurt some consumer’s credit scores, as their lowered available credit amount is now closer to the balance they are carrying, skewing their rating through no fault of their own.

And while this has ruffled some feathers, again the banks are willing to do so if it can help them lower their risk. While they don’t want anyone defaulting on their card, better a possible charge off of, say, $2,000 than $6,000.

For more information about online credit card processing please check out Cardaccept.com