Hi,

I plan to start my own reselling business soon, and so far the only problem setting everything up to go seems to be a viable CC processor based in Australia ..

I have checked out Revecom, worldpay and so on .. Quite frankly, I find that redirecting a customer to a 3rd party processor is very unprofessional, and from what I have seen, most of these don't even provide the option to fully customize the looks of the payment page ..

I have also looked at a number of australian processors like eMatters, eway, planetpos, etc .. well

ematters - 'fair' pricing I guess, but seem very 'unclean' / unprofessional .. or atleast that is the impression they leave on me with such a website / spelling ..

eway - good price, maybe once I have a few hundred customers ..

planetpos - quite cheap, but, also link to a totally new page that's hosted on their server .. unprofessional 'looking' all around ..

Well anyway .. those have been my impressions so far ..

If there're any decent processors here in Australia that you know of, and could recommend I check out , please do, because I am becoming desperate ..

What I would 'like' to see in a cc processor, would be:

- ability to FULLY customize the payment page so that it basically looks like part of the web site ..

- ability for recurring billing automatically .. that is, the payments continue on a monthly/quarterly basis until the customers quits hosting, then I instruct the processor to stop charging the cc..

- fair pricing, preferrably no high 'monthly' fees that do not already include some free transactions ..

Well, if you are a aussie reseller or similar, and have found something decent, or simply know of a company that atleast resembles what I tried to describe .. I would appreciate if you could let me know, either here, or email me at NOSPAMdk@nlc.net.au (remove the NOSPAM, it's just to prevent web crawlers from catching the real ad)

Anyway, I get the feeling this thread will end up with 15 views and 0 replies .. ah well :/

well firstly, using a third party cc processor does have its good and bad points. It can seem unprofessional redirecting customers to a different site with a different look, but I personally would not want to be dealing with credit card numbers on my site, well not yet anyway...

As far as I know all of the third party cc processor require you to redirect to their site, and some allow for customization, but it generally doesnt work too well...

So realistically, for your needs you should get yourself a merchant account........have you tried StGeorge...you can get a merchant account through them, but it will not be cheap, and to sign up you have to provide them with paperwork etc...

Cheers...

The problem we've had is finding an Australian CC processor that will process in US dollars rather than Australian dollars. We've been waiting for months now for eMatters to come up with its MultiCurrency system. Still waiting though, it was supposed to be out in November.

At the moment, we're using http://www.multicards.com as a 3rd party processor. Their commission fees are quite large, support is fairly ordinary and their e-mail receipts are a little messy, but they work and we've been using them for a while now. You can customise your order page to whatever you like. However, it still resides on their server, and the remaining couple of steps when a customer places their order are outside your own custom design.

They pass, but I wouldn't go so far as to recommend them. Unfortunately, as I said, we're still waiting on a decent Australian CC processor in US dollars.

If you are set on using a provider that will offer u.s. dollars, then use someone like worldpay, etc, as the amount you'll pay for a service from an Australian provider will equal and possibly exceed the providers charges from overseas.

If you decided to utilise an aussie provider then be aware that none of the banks that offer internet merchant accounts, which differ from standard merchant accounts, allow new businesses or existing ones to have one unless a proven track record has been established with that particular bank usually. There are exceptions to this although the business must have exceptionally impressive forecasts in the business plan presented to the bank.

The ANZ and Commonwealth Bank do have their own payment gateway solutions opposed to St George Bank utilising approved payment gateway providers.

A couple other providers that are not that expensive are;

http://www.havecomm.com.au
http://www.directone.com.au
http://www.cardaccess.com.au

Choosing which way to go really depends on what you can afford, how quickly you want to grow or anticipate to grow, and planning the business venture for the long term and not just what is going to happen in the next 6 months.

cardaccess actually looks pretty good. From what I have read thusfar it seems like the best processor so far ..

I like how there are 2 options, you can integrate it with your website and not collect cc info yourself ..

or you can collect the info, and attempt to charge through a gateway application .. sounds good too.

well thanks for pointing them out for me ..

by the way, how hard is it getting a merchant account? I know a number of small resellers who use ematters or similar processors .. and all of these require a merchant account .. so it can't possibly be that hard to get one?

also, the national bank's monthly merchant fees seem to be a lot lower ($5 aud) than for example stgeorge .. anyone know why? are they just as good?

cheers

danny

We've been with PlanetPOS since the day they started (and the day they restarted after some of the big boys tried to shake them off).

I cant speak highly enough about them. They work in with us on almost a daily basis. They jump on our forum and answer queries when asked to. Support is as good as it gets.

Our developer has built a system that now interacts beautifully with their gateway. ModernBill is almost 100% automated into it (less a single verification step that I insisted on). We've built an affiliate system that works over the top of it all, that allows affiliates to customise their own order forms and return welcome pages and their sales, and all recurring sales, are all presented in their statistics area which is automatically updated by the recurring billing notices we receive from PPos.

PPos are also in negotiations with an international bank to bring on multi-currency.

We've looked at many different options, but for our own situation it couldn't possibly be better.

Cheers

Gary

I have seen planetpos recommended by a number of people, and I can only assume they're good at what they do ..

However, by default you're meant to redirect your customers to yourname.planetpos.com which has a 'simple' store of a sort where you 'shop' blah blah ..that's where I closed the window.

I couldn't find any info on customizing or interfacing from a website or billing software directly into their gateway .. but since you say it is possible, I believe you ..

Did you developer have to work his ass off integrating it all or was he provided with a customizable API?

Anyway ...

Yes, the default "store" setup is quite bland (very "Frontpage template"), but we've never used it. They've always provided the ability to link directly to products, or to categories of products...and more recently the ability to pass variables back and forth by way of hidden form fields. It is this latest advance that Stuart jumped on and built a system which makes PlanetPOS, ModernBill and our affiliate system all get along famously.

I'll invite a PPos rep along here to the thread to see if he wants to discuss or elaborate on the actual reason that there's not a conventional "API" as such.

Regards

Gary

Thanks for the info, I will contact planetpos for more info :)

www.esec.com.au is another one to look at. AUD$0.20 per transaction purchased in AUD$550.00 blocks. Cheap if you have a bit of volume, and fully customisable.

thanks cannonball, they look great too. When I have atleast 200 customers paying by CC I will definately look into esec .. aud $0.22 per transaction is just incredibly good value. Really too bad they don't offer smaller volumes ..