By: AllBusiness.com

In the old days, to accept credit cards you needed a merchant account through a bank. But now there are a number of services that will let you accept credit cards online without your own merchant account.

Paypal is probably the most widely used service, with more than 50 million users. Paypal offers a service called Payflow that is a turn-key solution with several add-ons, including recurring billing and fraud protection.

If you're looking for more robust options for taking credit card payments, you'll probably want to go with a merchant account service. Here are just a few of the services currently out there.

But if you're serious about taking credit card payments online, you'll probably want to go with a merchant account service. Here are just a few of the services currently out there.

• Authorize.net
• Gotmerchant.com
• Instabill.com
• MerchantWarehouse.com
• NorthAmericanBancard
• Total Merchant Services

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