Hi

I need help fast!

I am desperately looking for cc processing for a UK business that allows manual/terminal entry of payment details.

Upto now I use Paysystems for e-commerce transactions direct from the web site and these are great BUT they do not permit manual cc entry.

For manual cc entry I have been using MultiCards for the last 5 years and they have been great. BUT recently it has been impossible to use them because they say terms and conditions of Visa/Mastercard have changed. This means I cannot process anything with them despite submiting all the information they have requested. Replies to help tickets are also now none existent.

I looked at the comparison chart produced by VanHost - great job but doesn't give any info if UK businesses are accepted - also many of the company web sites don't give this info either!

Questions -

1. Does anyone now if Authorize.net accepts UK businesses?

2. If they do, are they worth it and what reseller to use to open an Authorize account?

3. Has anyone heard of Durango Merchant Services? They are supposed to accept UK businesses BUT their web site contains no information regarding fees!

4. Are WorldPay worth the money - expensive set up and annual charges plus high percentage of transactions?

Most of all can anyone recommend cc processing for a UK business that allows manual/terminal entry of payment details?

Thanks

Kevin

We have used Worldpay for 3 years now and they are more expensive, yet are bulletproof.

Just my 10p :)

Cheers,
Rob.

Worldpay are worth the money, we and a lot of our customers are very happy with them.

The WorldAccess virtual terminal they provide will do what you require

I cant fault the worldpay route either

Neither can I! Worldpay is indeed top-notch especially if you plan to stick around.

we use worldpay and they are great

Worldpay are not the cheapest, however, I've yet to find a more stable and dependable company for processing cc's that fit our needs.

Give them a call they will be able to sort you out no problems :)

Craig

You could ask your bank for a processing machine, although I think you have to guarantee a certain amount of income to come your way...

I wouldn't personally touch Barclays in any way, shape or form.

We've used ePDQ from Barclays (Along with a BMS Internet Merchant Account) for 3.5 years now, not had any problems with them, only had about 24 hours in 3.5 years where we haven't been able to process cards and all but about 3 hours were notified well in advance.

If you ask your bank for a PDQ machine you need to make sure the merchant number you get is an Internet Merchant Number and not just a standard one.

We've used Secpay for around 4 years now:
http://www.secpay.com

They're very responsive and friendly to both support and customer questions. Their pricing is very competitive and they allow direct, deferred, batch and manual entry of CC details.

You need a US address in order to use Authorize.net.

Many thanks for the comments and suggestions.

I will have a look at secpay but think you need a true merchant account first.

Maybe WorldPay is worth another look.

Does anyone know what is happening with MultiCards? Still no response from their help desk and they are usually very quick in responding. Are they still in business?

Thanks

Kevin

Had another look at Worldpay. There info regarding disputed payments seems worrying.

The thing most worrying is it seems with Worldpay you absolutely cannot refund a payment therefore avoiding chargeback charges if a customer raises a query about the payment - never heard about this before. Paysystems and Multicards both allow payment refunds therefore avoiding a chargeback.

It seems to me to be almost forcing clients to pay the £20+vat monthly fee for their Guarantee service!

Does anyone have any good/bad experiences with them regarding handling of disputed payments?

Thanks

Kevin

I've had a refunded payment through worldpay - the merchant refunded it to me, didn't have to go to world pay.

There's no problem with doing refunds through Worldpay, you can do a full or partial refund of any transaction at any time.

What I think Kevin means, is that if a customer files a charge-back, with most merchants you can choose to do a refund, or let the chargeback go ahead - With WP, from the sounds of things, once a charge back has been issued you cannot refund the money to the customer instead.

KDAWebServices is correct that is what I meant and that is what it says in Worldpay's guidance notes - worrying

Addition - Worldpay guide also says that even if you refund a customer who has requested information from their credit card provider about a charge, that won't stop a subsequent chargeback. Infact Worldpay advise NOT issuing a refund because you may not only lose the refund, but also have to pay the same again on a chargeback, plus Worldpay's £10 chargeback fee.

In other words, if any customer disputes a charge, then the only way to prevent a chargeback and chargeback fee is if the customer subsequently withdraws their dispute.

I find this worrying. Maybe I am reading too much into this - are there any long serving Worldpay clients who can throw more light on this?

Thanks

Kevin

Originally posted by kjedwards
Addition - Worldpay guide also says that even if you refund a customer who has requested information from their credit card provider about a charge, that won't stop a subsequent chargeback. Infact Worldpay advise NOT issuing a refund because you may not only lose the refund, but also have to pay the same again on a chargeback, plus Worldpay's £10 chargeback fee.

In other words, if any customer disputes a charge, then the only way to prevent a chargeback and chargeback fee is if the customer subsequently withdraws their dispute.

I find this worrying. Maybe I am reading too much into this - are there any long serving Worldpay clients who can throw more light on this?

Thanks

Kevin

Hello,

What you say is true. Once you have received an RFI from a client you can not refund the particular transaction which is supposed to prevent you from losing that money twice (once due to the chargeback and once due to your refund) because banks do not necessarily instantly see that you have refunded that transaction which means they could proceed with the chargeback even though you have refunded the transaction.
Once a chargeback is issued, WorldPay or the merchant MUST honor it and pay back the amount plus associated fees regardless of whether you have already refunded it or not.

I guess that's the reasoning behind that policy of WorldPay.

*speaks from experience*

You *cant* refund a transaction once the chargeback process has started, WP will ask you for *proof* of order and delivery, singature is the *only* method that they will even consider passing on - it's one of the reasons we post a copy of the t&c's to o/seas customers and get them to sing and send it back.

Even if you've refunded a potentially *dodgy looking* transaction thecardholder can dispute it and go through the chargeback process, if you can demonstrate that it's allreday been refunded in full, thats the end of it.

*NEVER* refund part of a fraudulent transaction (say giving them the cash-back less WP fees) as they can then chargeback the full amount and you pay twice ! Then you have to try and claim it of the person, with no help from the c/card co, their bank or w/pay

HTH

Was looking for the same sort of answers and found this topic in a search:

We're a design house and the majority of our transactions are four figure sums paid by cheque.

However we do occasionally host third party sites and register domain names and ideally need to be able to accept debit & credit cards for those for the sake of completeness; those items only account for a fraction of our income.

I wouldn't have any intention of putting the high value transactions through a merchant account simply due to commission charges, so it's only really for the lower value items as it seems odd if a Company building eCommerce sites can't take card payments.

However - I know ecommerce in the UK isn't easy - our Customers usually tear their hair out trying to set up their merchant accounts (do Streamline ever phone anyone back?) - but for us it's almost impossible.

Streamline only bothered getting back to us after we submitted several enquiries and then only to tell us they're not interested in providing services for an Internet Services Company, the risk is too high.

Barclays ePDQ would quote but only at ridiculous commission levels.

We ended up with a Worldpay merchant account on an 8 week settlement cycle. Having been trading for a while I asked if this could be reduced, and in a month or so they could potentially reduce this to 6 weeks but no better than that (at least for another 6 months) because the type of services we offer are high risk.

All of this means we've never integrated our site with the Worldpay Checkout because I'd rather not bother, and just take cheques; if we lose sales of hosting so be it as it's not a core part of the Business. Hosting is such low value that it's just not worth the effort for us on an 8 week cycle and we've only actually processed about a dozen payments through the Worldpay online terminal in 6 months as I try to get people to pay by cheque in preference.

All of this leads me to conclude that when the year is up with Worldpay, we'd be better off going back to accepting cheques only. This from a Company building eCommerce websites for Clients. Welcome to the UK, please set your watch back twenty years...

I'm approaching Lloyds this week to see if I can get anywhere with them. Has anyone else in the UK managed to actually get a merchant account with, say, a 72 hour settlement cycle and without ridiculous charges, if so please let me know who from..

for the *small* cost vs ability to show you can do it, i'd advise leaving the w/pay in place - at least you can setup aclients demo through in in test mode :o)

As for banks, we're using lloyds cardnet for one customer and they were superb

We use Lloyds Cardnet too and for payment processing we use Protx. Protx also have a web-based virtual terminal you can use. Check out www.protx.com

Hi,

We also use Protx, WorldPay comes no where near them for QoS and cost. If you LTD your company and get a Barclays Business current account, Barclaycard Merchant Services will usually give you a merchant account.

HTH

Rob

What rates could you expect for a merchant account from a bank?

For customer not present transactions for web hosting you could get a rate as good as around 1.5%. 2% is more typical though. Most banks impose a monthly minium too.

Every bank has their own evaluation criteria and risk assessment. In our experience, Barclays charge the most yet are more likely to say 'yes' to a merchant account. Talking with Streamline (NatWest) or Cardnet (Lloyds) might take longer but you could get a far nicer deal.

So at the high end of the scale (as in barclays) your looking at 3% and the low-end 1.5-2%. So with protx that would be around 2%+10p per transaction.

yeah, or for £20 a month Protx don't charge any other fees.

Amex will be seperate and you'll usually start at around 2-3% plus £125 setup fee.

Originally posted by .net
So at the high end of the scale (as in barclays) your looking at 3% and the low-end 1.5-2%. So with protx that would be around 2%+10p per transaction.

Almost correct. Protx have their 'small business service' that costs £20 per month that gives you 1000 transactions per quarter. So each transaction costs 6p, not 10p.
If you put through more than 1000 per quarter then yes, it is 10p per transaction. I guess most small/medium sized hosting companies will need the small business service.

Still better than worldpay's 6%.

We use WorldPay and only have good things to say about them. I don't personally think it's expensive, it's a good service. In fact, due to our processing volumes WorldPay works out slightly cheaper than PaySystems.com for us - only by a few hundred per month, but it's better in our pocket than the payment processor.
Originally posted by .net
Still better than worldpay's 6%.
It's 4.5% not 6%. Also, another advantage with WorldPay and the reason it works out cheaper for us is because they charge no transaction fee like PaySystems.com and others do.

Isn't the 4.5% a transaction fee? Or do you mean no bank transaction fees?

I suppose it's an advantage that they get from being partly owned by RBS (Royal Bank of Scotland) and being registered as a company in Jersey. I doubt that they get charged more then 0.5% for putting the transactions through, so they're making at least 4% on each transaction as well as their other charges.

Do they still charge £10 to put money into your bank account?


Thanks,

Rob

Originally posted by robk
Isn't the 4.5% a transaction fee? Or do you mean no bank transaction fees?
Sorry, what I meant was the likes of PaySystems will charge you a precentage transaction fee and a fixed dollar ammount on top of that. WorldPay simply charge a flat 4.5% and nothing else - thus it can work out cheaper depending on your plan pricing and processing volumes.
Originally posted by robk
I suppose it's an advantage that they get from being partly owned by RBS (Royal Bank of Scotland) and being registered as a company in Jersey.
Yeah, the RBOS connection works nicely for us, as we have all our business banking through the RBOS. Because the two of them are connected, it makes working with both much easier.
Originally posted by robk
Do they still charge £10 to put money into your bank account?
Yeah, I think it's something like £10. PaySystems.com is $10 I think. Regardless, £10 or $10 isn't really an issue when you are depositing several thousand at a time.

PaySystems.com is probably a better choice if you are processing lower volumes.

We pay 3.65% with ePDQ and merchant account from Barclays, no charges for depositing money either, no waiting for it really, it's there in our account within 3 days too.

I feel sorry for NetBanx (http://www.netbanx.com), they offer a great service, although because they are independent they have to set higher transaction charges. If you can't get a merchant account and like to be able to speak to the same person on the phone every time, it's well worth considering them.

:)

Hi Karl,

How long have you had your merchant account? Barclaycard still wont reduce the 30 day wait we have to get our money. We've never had a chargeback either!


Thanks,

Rob

We're lucky in that we've been with them for 3.5 years now, but we've always only had a 3 day remitance with them, mainly because we got in before web hosting was classed as a high risk business to process cards for.

That was going to be my question :-)

We've never had a chargeback, but then we've only put a few transactions through it because of the long settlement cycle - something of a vicious circle :(

Same here Mark, we ask clients to pay by cheque or BACS as a result of this.

We're going to start selling hosting to non-development customers soon though, so we'll have to pleed with them.

Anyone notice how over-cheerfull the staff at Barclaycard MS are now on the phone? I think one of those cheesy American CS guru's has got to them!

;)

Rob

I try not to phone them often :)

Well it nearer 6% with their annual charges, their deposit charges. Also, its 4.5%+VAT = 5.3%

When ever you refund someone, they also keep the transaction charges(they dont refund it). So overall if your going with Worldpay, operate on 6%.

It can't be 4.5% + VAT, you can't levvy VAT on merchant charges - Or at least that is my understanding, I'm sure if Rob pops back in he'll know for 100% certain.

Actually, I seem to remember VAT being charged on our last BMS invoice. Can't find any in the office to confirm this though.

It's best to be VAT registered anyway. It's a pain to do it later on, and it means that items cost less (C&E refund VAT on items you buy).

bank charges are not subject to VAT, worldpay fees are as it's a service, similarly with other "processors" vat is payable on their "service"