An online merchant account is a lot better than free merchant accounts:

• As it provides you with tools required to make your life easier.
• Unlike free merchant accounts, your own online merchant account is capable of taking your business into the future and helps it expand and grow.
• For a small fee you can multiply your profits!
• With your own online merchant account you will no longer have to worry about paying an annoying percentage to your credit card processor.
• Your own merchant account makes you capable of providing your customers with not only credit card processing but you can also give them the benefit of wireless processing which you can never get in with the free merchant account services.

To open a new online merchant account, you might have to pay a large setup fee as compared to a free online merchant account but you pay less per sale and there is no extra percentage that you would have to pay to the credit card processors. So getting your own merchant account is a lot better than getting free merchant account services.