guys,

i'm looking for a payment solution that does not involve a gateway (ie. i'd prefer to purchase a certificate and take the credit card #'s online myself). what does this involve? i would need a merchant account w/ my bank, correct? if so, how would i enter the credit card transactions into my account? are there online solutions for this? currently i'm using internetsecure (based in canada) who has been very good, but i'd prefer to take a route where i am not charged for each transaction that takes place. i'm not too familiar with this entire process, so any information at all would be appreciated.

also, does anyone in canada know of a bank that will authorize merchant accounts quite easily?

thanks in advance,
matt

My local bank (I'm located in the US) provided me with the necessary software. When I first applied for a merchant account with them I already had offline software and I was able to use that. About two years later they switched to another processing company and distributed a new software package free to all of their merchants.

I would imagine that your bank should be willing to provide you with software (probably for a fee) or you could buy it yourself if your bank's processing company supports it. Offline companies do not do online processing, they use a POS terminal or, in increasingly rare cases, manually send in the transactions on paper.

I think most processing companies either charge per transaction or charge a much higher flat rate per month--the fees should be reasonable, only $0.10-0.25 or so plus a percentage per transaction, depending on your monthly volume.

--Erika Stokes

Originally posted by lotuslnd
guys,

i'm looking for a payment solution that does not involve a gateway (ie. i'd prefer to purchase a certificate and take the credit card #'s online myself). what does this involve? i would need a merchant account w/ my bank, correct? if so, how would i enter the credit card transactions into my account? are there online solutions for this? currently i'm using internetsecure (based in canada) who has been very good, but i'd prefer to take a route where i am not charged for each transaction that takes place. i'm not too familiar with this entire process, so any information at all would be appreciated.

also, does anyone in canada know of a bank that will authorize merchant accounts quite easily?

thanks in advance,
matt

I do not think any merchant provider will offer you a solution where there is no fee per transaction

sorry, my mistake ... i'm currently paying a percentage to my gateway for each sale ... and not simply a static amount. this is what i'm hoping to change.

does anyone handle their sales by making the cc charges themself? what exactly do you do with the credit cards once you have them on your system? do you have a seperate database server that is locked down tightly? can you give me a brief explanation of your setup?

thanks,
matt

While we're not a webhosting company, my site does it's own processing. We looked at all of ther alternatives, and found out that our local bank could make us a much sweeter deal.

We use a software package called ACatalog, that encrypts the credit card info on the users end via a java applet. It is then transferred encrypted back to our server, where it is stored, encrypted. The store software comes with a client, that ftp's in on command, retrieves the encrypted data, and downloads it to our PC. then, the local client decrypts it, dumping it into an access database.

We then import that database into whatever cheezy software the bank gave us, it dials out via modem and runs all the #'s, settles up, and we're done for the day. Takes us about 3 minutes...

-Jeff Cranfill

Originally posted by lotuslnd
guys,

i'm looking for a payment solution that does not involve a gateway (ie. i'd prefer to purchase a certificate and take the credit card #'s online myself). what does this involve? i would need a merchant account w/ my bank, correct? if so, how would i enter the credit card transactions into my account? are there online solutions for this? currently i'm using internetsecure (based in canada) who has been very good, but i'd prefer to take a route where i am not charged for each transaction that takes place. i'm not too familiar with this entire process, so any information at all would be appreciated.

also, does anyone in canada know of a bank that will authorize merchant accounts quite easily?

thanks in advance,
matt

This is a very late reply to your post, I was searching for InternetSecure keyword and saw your post. I use InternetSecure as well and you could do this with them. Request that they enable manual credit card processing in the Merchant Area for you. Then collect your customer CC details with your SSL certificate and enter it yourself in the Merchant Area for a live transaction. You can also use their gateway (as if you were one of your customers) after you collect CC details from your customers.

You want to change from a percentage to a flat rate per transactions? I may be miss reading your statement but are you referring to a fee to use the credit card on top of the normal merchant discount rate on credit cards.

All credit cards charge a percentage of the sale that is made on their cards since this is how the credit card companies make money.

we use http://www.emscorporate.com/ for credit card processing and we key in orders ourselves ...