Hello,

I am starting up a company, non-webhosting, that will be doing e-commerce. The service we will be selling goes anywhere from $200 - $5000 a year. However, due to the way the market is structured, this charge will be done once per year.

Since we don't plan (at least not for a while) to be doing low-amount high-bulk transactions, it strikes me that plans that are good for web hosting may not be the best for my situation.

I wanted to have our own interface programmed (so clients never see the payment processor's website) in PHP that would be directly integrated into the website, and possibly allow us to collect some of the basic user information for their site account. Not sure if this is doable.

Anyways, per-transacations fees are not the issue since we are talking about a much higher transaction amount. The percentage cut is where the difference comes in. Does anybody have any good suggestions?

I wouldn't forsee a problem with the needs that you outlined.

Programming a custom interface in PHP that never "touches" the payment gateway side with respect to the customer experience can readily be accomodated by almost any gateway system.

In terms of the merchant account approval, you'll definitely want to work with a merchant processor that is ok with annual charges. There are some that are, many that aren't. So that is the first thing to check on.

Next, in terms of your large ticket size - the risk associated with that will partially be dependent on the product/service being sold but that also shouldn't present a problem if you have the proper documentation in place to support it.

Welcome to the forums starfish0226

If you are located in the US - the major gateways (LinkPoint, Authorizenet.com and Verisign) all offer an API to be integrated onto your secure website to capture & process the credit card.

For such a large amount & the recurring billing, your account might be scrutinized a little hard than usual by a merchant account provider

Hey thanks. :)

Yes, we are located in the US.

So of the three you mention, do you have any suggestions on which would best fit my needs?

And when you say "scrutinized," what could that mean? It's nothing for me to worry about as long as I'm doing everything legitimately, I assume.

We use LinkPoint for our electronic gateway & have been extremely happy with it.

As far as the scrutinization, when you sign up with a merchant account provider, they will review your needs a little bit more, because a chargeback of $5,000 is pretty significant. The provider would want to make sure that you could cover it if a chargeback happened. They might look at your bank account, see if you have had insufficient funds & if so, for how long. They might look to see what your average daily balance is. Because if you cannot cover that $5,000 chargeback, they have to

I think Corey did a great job of summarizing the risks presented by a $5,000 average (or max) ticket size.

In fact, if you look at a profile of losses taken on merchant accounts, there is a definite correlation between higher ticket merchants and those with smaller tickets.

It takes a LOT of smaller tickets to turn into chargebacks to create a loss situation - but only one or a few larger chargebacks to turn into a loss for a processor on a high ticket merchant.

A perfect case in point is that just a month ago, we saved a merchant from what would have been a $6,000+ chargeback on one of their first sales.

When we called to verify it through the actual issuing bank, the cardholder on file stated that it was unauthorized and subsequently closed the account.

The merchant had been convinced that it was valid and had this gone further, they would have suffered a $5,000+ chargeback and overdrafted their account and probably ruined their business began it even began.

One of the things to always keep in mind is that while a merchant may be perfectly legitimate - the customer on the other end making the purchase isn't always so legitimate. And an eager merchant trying hard to please a "customer" can sometimes be very suspectible to fraud unless they are very careful.

This is why, especially when you are just starting up with a new merchant processing relationship, it is very important to check your orders carefully. And the bigger the order, the more scrutiny and diligence you should apply.

I would check out Corey and Russ out over at http://www.merchantaccounts4less.com. They have provided fantastic support, above and beyond what I have seen from any other reseller and almost any other processor that I have dealt with in the past. Some of my orders top $3,000. They might be able to help you

what kind of items are you selling?

Thanks Chris. I keep learning something new everyday :)

And thanks topguy for your recommendation. I am a little curious as well shibe. But I figured I could wait. LOL