Credit Card Processing

[backpageads]

1) does anyone know if paysystems is now defunct? they killed my old account last year, but they're website it still up, but it seems... ghost-townish.

2) used to be that credit card processors made money processing credit cards... now it seems they all want to make $25 a month for "statement fees", minimums, or "network access fees"?

what knid of cheesy crap is that?

Who does NO MONTHLY CHARGE online processing? I dont mind a slightly higher monthy... but $25 to send me a stupid automaticaly generated email? please.


JP
BackPageAds.com

[imaginemn]

Is it a flat fee of $25.00 or is it that you need to pay a minimum of $25.00 in fees and then you need to make up the difference? I know my merchant account if you don't maintain a minimum each month I need to pay the difference.

Example: If I pay over $25 in merchant fees there is NO monthly statement fee. If I don't pay over $25 then the difference needs to be made up by me.

imaginemn

[Jonathan VanSchaack]

same with my merchant

[clickbuild]

Paysystems is essentially dead. They got bought by a German company who did not honor the current customers, accounts got frozen, buildings exploded, governments fell and general mayhem ensued. I am getting my holdbacks in pennies here and there but I think for all intents they are no longer in the "internet payment gateway" business.

This all sucks as the choices are getting fewer, paypal is cheap, but clients sometimes need an account and you could have your account frozen. Others want the "statement fee", "gateway fee", "I need expensoive lunches fee" etc.

My opinion is that 2checkout is about the best option currently, if a touch expensive (5.5% / 45c per / no fees). The only downside with them is it can take 24-72 hours for them to fraud check. If you sell digital goods you can get caught out occasionally.

My tuppence for the day.

[yankeeman]

Originally Posted by backpageads

1) does anyone know if paysystems is now defunct? they killed my old account last year, but they're website it still up, but it seems... ghost-townish.

2) used to be that credit card processors made money processing credit cards... now it seems they all want to make $25 a month for "statement fees", minimums, or "network access fees"?

what knid of cheesy crap is that?

Who does NO MONTHLY CHARGE online processing? I dont mind a slightly higher monthy... but $25 to send me a stupid automaticaly generated email? please.


JP
BackPageAds.com

The $25.00 is a monthly minimum to be part of the network. Example, if you process roughly $1500.00 and your discount rate is 2%, you would meet your monthly minimum. Normally, you still have a monthly statement fee of around $10.00

[daisygrl]

Originally Posted by yankeeman

The $25.00 is a monthly minimum to be part of the network. Example, if you process roughly $1500.00 and your discount rate is 2%, you would meet your monthly minimum. Normally, you still have a monthly statement fee of around $10.00

Thanks for the info yankeeman. It helped me understand all the credit card processing fee's I was recently billed. Any suggestions on a merchant processor? I need a new processor for my online payments on my new site.

[ToddW]

Google Checkout... not a merchant account kind of thing but you can accept CC from people who have an account.

They charge the seller nothing currently!!

[webprofession]

Paypal is also best for small/medium seller.
I was using Paypal.

[charlesgan]

$25 for the email statement... scarely.

try consider 2CO or paypal

[alemcherry]

Originally Posted by ToddW

Google Checkout... not a merchant account kind of thing but you can accept CC from people who have an account.

They charge the seller nothing currently!!

Yeah.. this should have been an obvious alternative! Anyone has a report on how good/bad is google checkout?

[MisterA]

paypal would be my preferred choice.

[bnandika]

Yeah, I agree paypal, it''s secure and can handle payment from a dollar to thousand bucks

[bfarrell]

The 25.00 is a monthly minimum. Everything cost money to opperate. If you are not processing a certain amount of transactions, the account is not worth their time and or qualifies out the low volume customers allowing more time for busy customers.

All of the services I have used or looked at, have some sort of min/maintenance fee. Our PayPal is a Pro account. Monthly min plus transaction fee. As for a limit, not aware of one. The largest transaction we have put through it so far is about 5k.

[danparks]

Originally Posted by backpageads

Who does NO MONTHLY CHARGE online processing? I dont mind a slightly higher monthy... but $25 to send me a stupid automaticaly generated email?

Will PayPal work for you? Seems like a lot of people who go with a merchant account could get by without one and instead use PayPal. Just the approx. 2.6% + $0.30 charge per order, no hidden fees, and it integrates with just about all popular shopping carts.

Dan

[Corey Bryant]

It really depends on what country you are in. If you are wanting a "true merchant account", you will also need an electronic payment gateway (LinkPoint / YourPay, PayFlow, Authorize.net / Cybersource, Yahoo!®).

I could not tell what country you are in, so I'll talk a little about United States merchant accounts. I won't go too much into IPSP (Internet Payment Service Providers) / 3PP (Third Party Processors) like (some versions of) Paypal or 2CO (2CO is a bit different - 2CO is basically set up to resell your products or services).

If you are in the United States, chances are the merchant account provider is going to charge you anywhere from $10.00 - $25.00 a month. They might call this a statement fee, a customer service fee, etc - but it is a fee, call it what you want.

Some of them will impose a monthly minimim, let's say $15.00. And let's say your discount rate is 2.19%. Now if you sell $700.00 that month, that would be about $15.33 and your monthly minimum is met. You should not need to worry about this for this month. However, if you sell $450.00 that month, that is about $9.85, so the merchant account provider would charge you $5.15 to meet your monthly minimum requirement. And some merchant account providers will take their portion at the time of the sale and give you the rest or you can also ask them to just take it at the end of the month. There is also a transaction fee assessed as well. This is usually between $.15 to $.40 a transaction depending on your number of transactions.

Now on to the electronic payment gateway. These will usually be anywhere from $10.00 - $60.00 a month. These gateways might also assess a transaction fee from $.10 - $.30 or maybe they might charge you a percentage as well (i.e. Yahoo!®). And some gateways will just be a monthly fee, and will not charge you a transaction fee. And some gateways will give you a certain number of transactions free each month - i.e. PayFlow Pro gives you 1,000 I beleive before assessing a per transaction charge).

Now if you are in the United States, doing more than $1,000 a month - consider a merchant account and not an IPSP. The reason being, you will get your money usually anywhere from 24-72 hours after the transaction ACHed right into your bank account. You don't need to wait a week or so or contact them to get your money. This will save you some valuable time. Of course, some people don't think time is valuable and a IPSP might be for you. An IPSP might also be for you if you are worried about potential chargebacks - let them vet the transaction for you.

Electronic Payment Gateways: These are the virtual connectivity between your website and the transaction processor (First Data, Nova, etc). The gateway will usually offer an API so you can process the transaction on your secure website, keep the checkout process consistent. Of course, you can also use the electronic payment gateway's secure web page as well.

The gateway will connect to the transaction processor. If the transaction processor has a relationship with the issuing bank and acquiring bank, the transaction processor will approve / deny the transaction without sending it to the card association (Visa, MasterCard, American Express, etc). You might remember that First Data was doing this and Visa was suing First Data because First Data was approving / denying the transaction without sending it to Visa, thus cutting Visa out of a piece of the transaction. This was finally settled though since it was to no one's advantage.

There are basically seven steps:

• Authorization
• Merchant Balancing
• Capture
• Clearing
• Interchange
• Surcharge
• Merchant ACH

Now of course if you are not in the United States, some of this will not apply to you and probably written in vain, however I am hoping that it will help some United States' merchants.

Which will lead me to one final thing - when picking a United States Merchant Account Provider - you should see if the company is a registered ISO / MSP and with what bank. Or if the website is an agent website, you should see what company the agent is registered with and once again, what bank the agent / ISO / MSP is associated with. If you do not see this, close the browser window immediately. Merchant account providers and agents in the United States have to follow strict rules set by Visa / MasterCard.

Hopefully this will help a few members - my fingers need a break from typing.

[~ServerPoint~]

2checkout.com is the most trusted one. But have to agree that fees are really high.

[isaak]

My first suggestion: DON'T use PayPal or it will get you in trouble, regardless of what your business is.
I suggest you use Google Checkout for credit card processing, it has low fees, it's trustworthy and you can easily integrate it in your website.

[~ServerPoint~]

My first suggestion: DON'T use PayPal or it will get you in trouble, regardless of what your business is.

Hello!
Why?
But if you are niot in US it will be true. Anyway 2CO allow to accept paypal payments.

[john8]

My small business was using paypal business account, it's quite good, but I don't know why they will get sellers into trouble. Mind share it?

Does Google checkout can accept CC from buyers without Google checkout account?

[JetWash]

We are using 2co, They are good. Though we have had some issues in regards to the account verification. Driving me nuts right now...

GRRR.