I want to start my own hosting biz but I have some problems with accepting credit card. Anyone from Australia here? Can you suggest one company which is suitable for a small Australian biz. I know 2Checkout and some US companies but they do charge for wire transfer and it takes long time before their cheques are clear at Australian banks. Am I right?

If you are from OZ, can you share some experiences with me because I'm quite new to this business. All your helps are appreciated

We've been using planetpos.com.au for close to 18 months now. Very highly recommended. Tell Arthur Gary sent you. :)

Cheers

Gary

We've been using Multicards.com for almost two years now. They're quite average really, but we like the control we get over order pages. But they won't solve your problems with cheques taking so long, and their support is slow. Cheques arrive about 6 weeks after payments. NAB clears them in 3-4 weeks, but money is usually deposited to our account within 3-4 days of banking the cheque anyway.

Our main problem is that, as far as we're aware, there is still no Australian Bank and Payment Processor pair that will charge in US dollars. In Australia, a merchant account would so much better than one of these third party systems, so that you could get your money instantly. The closest we've ever found is eMatters.com.au, whose multicurrency plan has been "coming soon" for around six months now... anyone know of any others?

PlanetPOS are in negotiations for multiple currencies. I'll see if I can get an update.

Cheers

Gary

Problem will be though that they will charge high charges on a monthly basis for using this type of service, which will negate any savings at present.

Will be a bit like that argument of using a U.S. based processor to having your own merchant account in oz all over again as the costs will be expensive.

InternetSon, other than 'Australian' you didn't really say what your requirements are.

We have a 'standard merchant account' (with Westpac) and an EFTPOS terminal. While this does not provide for 'real time processing' - at this stage I'd rather check each CC order anyway, so it's not a problem.

The advantage is that the costs are minimal - about AU$33/m and 1%.
The disadvantage is that the customer is billed in AU$ - even though we can accept Visa/MC from anywhere in the world, which could be an issue if many of your customers are OS.

Hi,

Sorry if i go far from your topic, but i think if about accepting credit card, there is a relation with what i want to ask.

I have client from Indonesia want his website can accept credit card for his service transaction.

If anyone knows about this, give me a clue .... :confused:

Thanks,

that was a riddle, right?

InternetSon,

from what I have gathered you don't have too many options. PlanetPOS is a small firm, but putting that aside - they have a major fault, they don't allow you to run the forms on your website, and the forms you have on theirs, are not so pro-looking, or very customizable. If you don't care for those things, I would highly recommend them.

secondly, while eMatters lets you host your own payment form, recurring biliing is only possible if YOU collect all cc details, and do the recurring payments manually..

Hope you can find something that suits you.

Originally posted by papillon
InternetSon,

from what I have gathered you don't have too many options. PlanetPOS is a small firm, but putting that aside - they have a major fault, they don't allow you to run the forms on your website, and the forms you have on theirs, are not so pro-looking, or very customizable. If you don't care for those things, I would highly recommend them.



I'm not sure I follow you there. PlanetPOS are a third party processor, like any other (complete with recurring billing), and you can either redirect to their order forms, then the payment form, and back again...or use your own forms and redirect to the payment form passing the product codes and other required variables, and then back again. It works for us. :)

secondly, while eMatters lets you host your own payment form, recurring billing is only possible if YOU collect all cc details, and do the recurring payments manually..

eMatters are a "top 5 banks" payment gateway, from what I know. You still need your merchant account. The payment gateway software is on their machines, and you still have to send your visitors through that gateway and back again with confirmation/decline codes.

Don't get me wrong. I realise PlanetPOS aren't the be all and end all of Australian eCommerce, but in our particular case it has been a pleasure to work with them. We've only got to mention an improvement, and they get onto it. So the system they are constantly developing has some certain advantages for this industry. I realise there's a few other good providers down here too, and we've had a look at a lot of demos, but we're happy where we are.

Cheers

Gary

Gary,

I did check out planepos on your recommendation a while ago. And yes while I have found them to be most attentive to their customer needs, they said something which conflicts with what you've been saying.

You've said before and are saying again that you can host your your forms on your own site, and pass variables back and forth, but when I spoke to them - they assured me they cannot and will not let anyone host their own forms on their servers, due to their business structure and some regulations.

So I am not too sure what you mean when you say you can host your own form and pass variables between your server and theirs. Maybe they are giving you special privileges as a trusted longtime customer, and you aren't supposed to be telling us about it? ;)

Are you referring to the product/order pages, or the secure payment page? If it's the later, then PlanetPOS are the same as eMatters/etc/etc. You don't receive an API to run on your server...the payment form resides on theirs. It would have been simpler another way, but they couldn't run with that for reasons you've been told about.

Here's an outline of what we do:

We have a (secure - so as to not cause browser issues when swtiching to PPOS's https) order form that simply gathers the domain name (no need for anything else at this stage, as the rest of the info is going to come back on the payment notification anyway).

This knocks up a local record and redirects the client to PPos together with a confirmation code.

This code forms part of an image on the payment confirmation page, which when executed ("click here to finish your order") finalizes the local record, and our billing module sends us something like this:

---------------------------------------

Hi there,

A new client (<modernbill_client_id_number>) under the name of <client_name> has signed up for a <hosting_plan> package.

The details are as follows;

Planet POS Invoice ID: 12345
Planet POS Recurring ID: 123
Domain: <domain_name>
Generated Password: abc123abc
Total Amount: <dollar_value>

To confirm or deny please visit;
http://<our_billing_module>/cgi-bin//admin/index.cgi?client--verify_order_1--123

Thankyou.

---------------------------------------

By this stage ModernBill is simply waiting for the username we assign, which we enter once the account is set up, at http://<our_billing_module>/blah and the Welcome email goes out.

All done. And an affiliate system is sitting over the top of all that.

There are two instances when this can mess up.

Someone follows an old link direct to the secure payment page for a product...in which case we still have confirmation of the payment and all billing information and it takes but a minute to email for the domain name. This instance can occur a bit more frequently, especially since alot of clients have and use those old links still, but we're fixing those as they occur.

Or if someone fails to click "click here to finish your order", in which case we already have the domain name and confirmation/billing info. Just ModernBill doesn't know if it's been paid yet. But if we don't confirm that order (by entering the username) within 72 hours it scraps the record so as not to congest ModernBill. We haven't had this problem yet.

I'd go on about the prospects of this system, but this is the wrong forum and we haven't smoothed off all the edges yet. :)

Cheers

Gary

2checkout works great you can hold money for the transfer like $1000 and then transfer at that level. It doesnt cost you for wires then !

>>
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One of the considerations also too is cash flow when choosing one solution over another which is the greatest strength with having a merchant account. Choosing a solution not only based on price alone, but on chargeback cost, refund cost, payment costs and payment time must all be considered which makes PlanetPOS attractive despite its less than appealing shopping system.

You could try worldpay.

It can handle multiple currencies.

I use esec, www.esec.com.au
they work with westpac and commonwealth banks.
westpac also have their own gateway now which i am about to investigate.
Esec is AUD$500+GST for 2,500 trans, works out ot be 0.22c/trans
those trans last for a yr then you need to buy some more.
of course the bank will also charge you their fees.
hope this helps