I am having the darndest of time choosing a merchant account that is good. I've read all of the blogs here and there just doesn't seem to be one that is better than the other.

Can someone help me with information as to who the best merchant account provider would be? SO far, I have read about merchant plus, clickbank, worldpay, eNets and CDG Commerce.

PLEASE SEND HELP ASAP:rolleyes:

I used CDG when i had a merchant account, good people and never had a problem with them.

Welcome to the forums SamanthaKent!

It really depends on where you are located, etc. I take it you might be in Los Angeles, CA?

If so, if you think you will be doing more than $1,000 a month, consider a merchant account. Else 2CO which is basically a third party processor - might be your best choice.

Also, whatever you choose, you might also pick Paypal in conjunction with wither 2CO or a merchant account.

Corey,

I have a paypal account and have had problems with them when I was back in Texas. I am located in LA, is there something based here that is good?

S

Well we all tend to remember the bad problems with Paypal :) - but I can understand totally why some people do not like Paypal or anything.

As far as the best for you - it all depends on what you might be selling, monthly volume, etc.

I'm selling services that are bought in blocks of hours. I need something that is going to send me an immediate confirmation of sale and invoice so that I will be able to track new customers and how many blocks of hours they have purchased.

First - thanks for the kind words, scooterh. :)

SamanthaKent, in terms of getting an immediate confirmation of sale & invoice - that should be the case for virtually any merchant account & gateway system as they all operate in real-time.

Typically, as soon as the transaction is complete, an e-mail receipt is generated for both you and the customer.

A more advanced implementation that you could also do would be to setup your payment gateway to post the results to a system on your site that would also then update your own local customer database and/or perhaps even provision the actual service if it is something that could be done over the Internet.

And 2CO will not actually support that (http://www.2checkout.com/products.htm)
Services Using Credit Card Transactions as Deposits or Credits. That is one thing you want to make sure that the MAP / 3PP will not have a problem with. Most will not but a lot of 3PP will because they are already under a lot of scrutiny from Visa / MasterCard

Thank you both for the information...I really appreciate yall's help. Have a great night...Sam

cdgcommerce:

Using authorizenet on one of my websites of course both myself and the purchaser receive the email notification in real time.

I am interested in getting my gateway to notify or post the results so that the pending transaction in my.sql is then approved. Is this difficult to do? as it would eliminate the manual step for me.

Originally posted by CRTicas
cdgcommerce:

Using authorizenet on one of my websites of course both myself and the purchaser receive the email notification in real time.

I am interested in getting my gateway to notify or post the results so that the pending transaction in my.sql is then approved. Is this difficult to do? as it would eliminate the manual step for me.

Read up on authorize.net's API (at their site) -- they even provide code in multiple languages to get you started. You'll be able to read the response codes to see if the transaction went through or not and act on it. You can also use almost any of the shopping cart packages out there as they generally have authorize.net gateway support built in.

I'm a CDG Commerce customer :)

Originally posted by SamanthaKent
I'm selling services that are bought in blocks of hours. I need something that is going to send me an immediate confirmation of sale and invoice so that I will be able to track new customers and how many blocks of hours they have purchased.

if you can do integration programming, try www.bitpass.com they protect time-guarded URLS very well, but they don't want to give you user information so I collect it myself.

I am with CDGCommerce for 6+ months, they have been good, never any problem with payments or anything, BUT they should certainly improve the PHONE SUPPORT, all PHONE SUPPORT do is, take the name/company/phone and sends a email and than you have to follow up on the email by email, which takes hours of time if not longer to get the question answered or the issue resolved, sometimes it has taken even 24-36 hours for a simple response which can be answered/resolved in less than 2 minutes over the phone.

So no true phone support, other than that all is good at CDGCommerce. Plus there is always Chris @ CDG here who is helpful guy overall.