Hi All,

We accept payments from $14.95 to $39.95. We are currently signed up with Revecom.Com for credit card processing. They charge 3.95% + $1.00 per transaction.

Our volume is about 5 transactions/day. Given this, what are my options to reduce transaction fee? Would it be better to

1. Stay with Revecom
2. Change to another 3rd party - Please make recommendations
3. Get a merchant account - Please make recommendations

Looking forward to hearing your comments.

Cheers,
spartner

Assuming your average payment is $22 x 5 transactions per day x 30 days, your monthly charges are $3300.

With Revecom that costs you $280.35 per month.

With 2checkout.com that would cost $249. A small savings, but I have not used them and couldn't tell you about the service.

With the credit card merchant I use the monthly cost is $29.95 plus a rate of 2.29% and $0.30 per transaction. The monthly cost would be $150.52.

It is time to get your own merchant account. if you are in the U. S. I highly recommend On Line Data. I signed up at nationwebbiz.com. They have no startup fee, but do charge you $99 at a later date. Approval is instant.

Get a full merchant. The transactions range from 1.75%-2.75% with 35 cent.

Most Merchant accounts charge 2.4% for Mastercard and Visa. Cardservice International is good, however, I've heard bad things about using thier gateway directly. We have a cardservice account and a cybercash(verisign) account, so the money feeds through cybercash, then cardservice acts like our bank (since our bank wasn't setup with the processor cybercash used). Works pretty well. We just pay Cardservice, not cybercash, or verisign.

You sure nationwebbiz.com is above board?
The site looks like a 13 year old slaped it together :(

Originally posted by dbnet
You sure nationwebbiz.com is above board?
The site looks like a 13 year old slaped it together :(

That's a page of nothing but affiliate program referrals, maybe that's his site? :rolleyes:

Here's the actual site:
https://www.onlinedatacorp.com/onlineapp

Make sure to read the fine details, there are many!

Enjoy

Till now I have only used 2checkout and revecom, so I have a couple questions about merchant accounts (specifically the one listed above).

1) What happens on charge backs? How much do you pay?

2) How does the customer get charged? Does he enter his number and automatically get billed, or does the number get sent to me, and I have to manually enter it or something?

3) How does recurring billing work?

4) What name appears on the credit card bill, your company name?

why not try PAypal?

2.9% + .30 for transaction

I used paypal for one year. Then I switched to a third party credit card processor. Immediately my sales jumped 8 to 10 times over night. Then I wondered why so few people bought when I had paypal, so I went to test it. I tried to buy something from myself (signing up fresh as my customers would).

The first error message was in regards to my email address. Ok, then the next error message was "enter password". Of course I had entered a password, the same one I used for my regular paypal account. So what was wrong with it? After three attempts I finally guessed that it must be too long (but then why does it work for my other account!). So I entered a shorter password, adn it worked.

Then the next error was to enter the three digit verification number. I did that, and then it gave me the final error:

"This card needs further authorization, please enter another card."

My god! After 15 minutes of seriously wanting to buy something, thats what a customer gets? And just two minutes before all this, I used the same credit card to purchase a test item from myself through the third part processor. It took 60 seconds!

My advice to those using paypal, "You are losing 90% of your sales."

Simply switching to a third party credit card processor will multiply your sales like anything.

Well the name itself 'paypal', probably scares people away. We are currently using 2checkout and are very happy with it.

Originally posted by dsj
I used paypal for one year. Then I switched to a third party credit card processor. Immediately my sales jumped 8 to 10 times over night. Then I wondered why so few people bought when I had paypal, so I went to test it. I tried to buy something from myself (signing up fresh as my customers would).

The first error message was in regards to my email address. Ok, then the next error message was "enter password". Of course I had entered a password, the same one I used for my regular paypal account. So what was wrong with it? After three attempts I finally guessed that it must be too long (but then why does it work for my other account!). So I entered a shorter password, adn it worked.

Then the next error was to enter the three digit verification number. I did that, and then it gave me the final error:

"This card needs further authorization, please enter another card."

My god! After 15 minutes of seriously wanting to buy something, thats what a customer gets? And just two minutes before all this, I used the same credit card to purchase a test item from myself through the third part processor. It took 60 seconds!

My advice to those using paypal, "You are losing 90% of your sales."

Simply switching to a third party credit card processor will multiply your sales like anything.


who do you use as a third prty processor?

Hi,

I've been watching parts of this board for a while but this is my first post here. I have yet to see anyone mention the system I am currently using.

I too went looking at merchant accounts and after lots of searching, I found I already had the software on my computer . . . QuickBooks.

QuickBooks has a partnership with two banks that offer merchant accounts. I went with the bank that charges $10/month plus the normal fees (2.35% = .25 if I remember right). The other bank they use has a $15/month fee but slightly lower rates.

This is not an automatic system but it is very easy to use. I'm still small plus I only bill quarterly so it has been no problem keeping up with billing.

Using QuickBooks, you do have to get the card number to yourself somehow. I use SSL to collect it and PGP to send it to me. At billing time, I just make an invoice and then click on "receive payment". The cc# is already there and is processed on line. QuickBooks puts the entry in the accounting for me and it's done. I click the "send" button and QB sends a thank you note along with a copy of the paid invoice to the customer for their records.

Other features I like is that they also work with PayPal. I started taking PayPal when I was still just a reseller, so I still have some customers that want to stay with them. When I make an invoice, I have the option of having a PayPal link put right on the invoice. When they get the invoice in their e-mail, they click on the link and make payment. I get notice payment was made, log in via QB and "download payments". Again, the payment is entered as being received and deposited to my account. I have PayPal set to sweep out my account every night and deposit any money that's there.

For my check/money order paying customers, I just e-mail them a copy of the invoice and let QB track the accounts recievable too. Check payers usually need a reminder, but that's just a matter of opeining their invoice and clicking "send" and pasting a "second notice" comment in the e-mail.

Negatives? A few. * It's not automatic which wouldn't be good for a larger host. * Reconciling the merchant account/PayPal activities can be frustrating. * There is no easy way to track when to bill customers again in QB . . . that's not a big thing for me as I would keep a detailed database for customer information anyway.

They do have an automatic billing feature available but only through their QuickBooks for the Web. I did a 30 day trial but only having dialups available here , it was painfully slow.

What I like about it, is there is no double entry of data. My billing system is also my accounting system so entering in one enters in the other. I feel I'm trading automatic accounting for automatic billing.

You can visit http://www.quickbooks.com if you want more details. As usual, no affiliation, just what I use. Hope it may help someone out. :)

Scott
sonservers.com

<<Please set up a signature (see PROFILES above)>>

Originally posted by SonServer

As usual, no affiliation, just what I use. Hope it may help someone out. :)


As usual? How come you only have one post then? :eek:

I’ am having problems with my SSN for some reason... Everywhere
that needs to verify my SSN says that it is not valid, I know my
SSN by heart, what could be the problem and how can I resolve it?
Yes I work and pay taxes, there should be no reason for my
SSN to be invalid.

I used to have a merchant account, but it starting costing more to
keep than I made. It was a bad idea since I was new to the whole
web hosting business. Probably going to start up using paypal
and then go back with a merchant account when sales increase,
or is nessesary.

I tried 2checkout the other day and I had nothing but problems with connectivity and browser issues. I'm probably going to go with ProPay. Even though they don't offer recurring billing, that can be a good thing because you can give partial refunds or charge a different amount the next month if the customer upgrades plans.

Originally posted by vipe


As usual? How come you only have one post then? :eek:

Yes, "as usual" . . . like most people when they are happy with a product and say so in a forum. Usually those people are not affiliated with the product, just satisfied with it's performance.

Please excuse me for not detailing that statement and all the confusion it caused you.

SonServer

the best service to use is PayPal (which offers subscription services for all the monthly rate), and Billpoint.com, which is owned by eBay but your customer do not need to be members of it or anything like that...just my experience!

:cool:

I recommend getting your own merchant account.

http://www.emscorporate.com/ can have you up and running instantly.

we use them and have been very happy with their performance.