What if I already have a Merchant Account with some "brick and mortar" business? If you already have a Merchant Account associated with a “brick and mortar” business, it can be used for a short time. The reason it can only be used for a short time is that those financial institutions base their fees on “swiped” transactions (where card owners are present and visually identified). Hence, a discount fee might typically be 1.5%. However, those same institutions will usually charge twice that rate, or 3%, for non-swiped transactions. And financial institutions that give “brick and mortar” merchant accounts will place a limit on the amount of non-swiped transactions that they process. Even if you used your current "brick and mortar" Merchant Account for a short period of time, it will require a encrypted method of getting the credit card information to you. So the website cost will be the same. However, when you later decide to add the gateway and use an internet online merchant account, there will be an additional website cost for adding the gateway and software to make this happen. That cost for going back and adding the gateway and shopping cart will be a one time charge of $150.00. So if you start an online business and want to take care of the website and everything else except the Online Merchant Account just to see how it goes, that is a possibility but realize that your current Merchant Account will charge more than an Online Merchant Account and they will stop accepting non-swiped transactions at some point early on. Also, you will have to enter every transaction manually. With an Online Merchant Account, the transactions are handled automatically. For $30/month, it will be the “cheapest” secretary you could possibly have.