After reading through all these posts, I have a pretty good idea what I want and need. I think I have researched everything pretty thoroughly.

My needs:

Recurring billing (most of my clients pay me a certain amount of money for maintenance, websites)
The ability to have some place to process the credit cards if I am speaking with a client
The ability to stay on my website if my clients pay me there

I have looked at the gateways since it seems this is where everything matters (thanks to a few posts on here)

Verisign. Seems to be OK, but a bit expensive and they want to nickel and dime you on everything
Netbilling. The extra costs are way too much
LinkPoint. Seems to offer everything that I want and is owned by a very stable company
Authorize.net. They seem to charge extra for recurring billing

Anything that I might have missed?

You need a merchant account to use gateways you have listed.

You do indeed still need a merchant account to go along with any of the above payment gateways.

Another alternative gateway is iTransact, which offers free built-in recurring billing and a number of other nice value-adds.

Other options for gateways that are very stable include CyberSource and Plug-n-Pay.

Welcome to the forums websites4u2day!

It seems you have a grip on everything. And I take it you might be in the United States since yo are reviewing those gateways?

The LinkPoint payment gateway is probably one of the strongest out there. It is owned by the First Data Corporation. First Data has been doing electronic money transfers since 1871 and they were the first processor of both VISA® and MasterCard® bank-issued credit cards in 1976. First Data processed 12.2 billion transactions in North America alone in 2003.

Authorize.net is probably the most advertised electronic gateway. A lot of people think they can sign up with them and immediately start to accept credit cards. They do not release you need a merchant account as well. Authorize.net even uses the First Data platform to help facilitate transaction processing.

Verisign also has a payment gateway. Verisign is probably the most recognized name because they also offer other services and products for the internet (i.e. SSL certificates, domain registration, hosting, etc). You do not need to purchase everything from Verisign to have a successful e-commerce business.

I have not dealt all that much with Netbilling because of the extra charges that you also mention so I am unfortunately not able to comment on that one.

Thanks everyone for the helpful advice. I do understand that I need a merchant account as well as a gateway.

After reading the posts on here and learning that I could sign up for a test account with LinkPoint, I did that. I have already implemented my cart with LinkPoint easier than I thought. I could not locate how to get a test account with any other gateway and so far I have been very impressed.

My understanding is iTransact is not a Visa CISP certified gateway so you might want to think twice before you go with that system. You can find more information on the certified providers at: http://usa.visa.com/media/business/cisp/List_of_CISP_Compliant_Service_Providers.pdf

Hope this helps!

John

To set the record straight on the point mentioned above, iTransact has successfully completed both its MasterCard SDP audit and the Visa CISP audit.

The paperwork was filed on schedule but Visa is running around 4-6 weeks behind due to the influx of paperwork received by numerous gateway and e-commerce providers towards the end of the September 30th deadline.

As soon as Visa updates this document at that time, I'm sure that iTransact will be one of the new companies listed on it.

I would still have concerns about them as they waited until the last minute to try to get certified. The deadline was September 30th of this year. The CISP program has been around since 1999 and gateways like Authorize.net have been on the certified list for 2 years.

Hope this helps!

The CISP program has indeed been around for a long time and while Authorize.Net only waited a year or two to formally get certified - this does not mean that other gateways were any less secure on a practical basis during the period when CISP certification was not a mandated requirement.

Authorize.Net is a great payment gateway solution. However, there are also many other options available in the market that offer their own unique advantages in various scenarios.

There isn't "one gateway" for all merchant needs so it is important for merchants to understand the differences between one gateway solution and another to be able to pick and choose the option that is best for their specific needs.

The CISP program was approved in October 1999 and mandated June 2001. To wait until the last month before fines start in my opinion is something to be concerned about.

For more info on the program visit www.visa.com/cisp

John

iTransact did not wait until the last month to take care of their internal CISP certification. That had been done a long time ago.

The only thing done towards the end of the deadline was the filing of the formal paperwork by their designated auditor. If anything, they might have been better served picking a less popular auditor for this aspect of the process. :)

Yes....Good Point. If anyone wants to learn more about iTransact their site is www.itransact.com

My understanding is they have a very good merchant account program as well. They can set you up with the merchant account and iTransact gateway direct so you do not have to go with a reseller. ;)

Hope this helps!

Yes - in fact, it appears that they have taken a similiar approach to that of Authorize.Net, Verisign, Cybersource and other popular gateways.

Case in point, if you call up Authorize.Net directly and ask for a merchant account & gateway, they will try to push a Wells Fargo package.

In fact, if you spend some time to research it, John, you will actually find that most payment gateways provide some kind of a bundled merchant account solution due to a marketing arrangement that they have in place.

This is nothing new in the industry and has been the case for years.

Naturally, simply because a given gateway provider has a marketing deal in place does not mean that the given merchant account pricing, terms & conditions or service levels and value-adds would be equal (or better) than that offered by another provider offering the same gateway.

There are numerous factors to consider with any such decision but they are really beyond the specific scope of this thread but which have been well covered in other threads.

And to that point, I also feel that this thread is starting to go off on a tangent and veering away from the more important topic at hand - which was specifically to help websites4u2day with his questions.

In fact, it appears that he may have already found an answer to his questions and a solution to his needs.

So speaking of that, websites4u2day, are you all set or is there anything else that any of us here could help clarify for you? :)

Thanks cdgcommerce. I am all set. I loved being able to set up LinkPoint® first and found it easy to work with.

I also contacted coreybryant from here since it seemed he was the only one to offer LinkPoint®. Just finished signing the merchant application and ready to fax back.

So far, I have been extremely happy with the services he provided.

Glad to hear you are all setup, John. Best of luck with your new solution. :)