im in Canada but my prices are in USD

how much does it cost.. which is best...

You see I havent really started a business yet.. i just want some cc service for a few people... so i dont know if getting a merchant gateway is worth it?

This should be posted on E-Commerce Discussion. You can read many posts about merchant gateway or payment processor there.

This is definitely a searchable question, but a few good ones are

* Paypal
* 2checkout
* MoneyBookers

If you're looking for true merchant solutions try

* Authorize.net
* Linkpoint.com

Hope this helps.

Have a look at www.cdgcommerce.com for a merchant account + gateway combo. They are extremely responsive and helpful - I've been with them for a while now - can't beat the price either!

whats with authorize.net and all those companies... they dont have any prices posted or any clear package to choose... makes it hard for a newbie...

Thanks for the kind words, Matt. :)

whats with authorize.net and all those companies... they dont have any prices posted or any clear package to choose... makes it hard for a newbie...

authorize.net and the like are just the gateway providers, they pretty much solely go with having resellers who provide backing banks and that end of the spectrum.

There have been plenty of praising reviews on cdg and the like, I would suggest doing a search. I myself can recommend merchantplus.com who does offer authorize.net still I believe as an option (been with them over half a year now).

However if you are using a Canada backing bank account you may have slightly more limited options (however I do believe alot of processors are able to work with canadian accounts and US).

geestring, best of luck in your (re)search on this, remember don't just jump into any one boat cause it "looks" good. Providers of any type of service should not be judged solely on looks but more so on support and functionality, amongst other things.

I will second Authorize.net .. not sure about its limitations in Canada though ...

Unless you register your business in the US, there are some providers that you will not be able to use. Canadian merchant accounts do not offer the same security or support for some US functions, such as AVS.

so im looking for a authorize.net reseller?

what are canadians using!??!

im in Canada but my prices are in USD

...You see I havent really started a business yet.. i just want some cc service for a few people... so i dont know if getting a merchant gateway is worth it?

The question is, why would you want a merchant account if you are only going to use it on a few people, (i.e: 5 or 10 the most)? I suggest an authorize.net reseller their rates are reasonable, stay away from charge.com.

Just recently, we have given our VS customers the choice of using our merchant account or third party payment processor. We used to let them pay using the 3rd party processor for the first month then switch them to protect our merchant account from unneeded chargebacks, the local customers though are another story, from your original post, it sound like your customers are local? So, they may not be familiar with places like Paypal/2co/ccbill/etc.


:)

If you can establish a U.S. business entity, U.S. bank account and have a U.S. phone # and address for your site and WHOIS record, it is possible to establish a U.S. merchant account even if you are a Canadian citizen with a Canadian Social Insurance Number.

However, if you have only a couple customers that you know well who want to pay you - you may just want to stay with PayPal until you get to the point where you want to really grow your business and corresponding processing volume.

I definitely agree that getting your own direct merchant account is the best path if you're going to be actively marketing & growing your business... but in the mean time, it might be the least expensive route (due to no monthly fees) to just use PayPal for the occasional payment that you are doing at the moment.

check out paradata

well paypal seems like a good idea.. however the clients dont have paypal... they have credit card... I dont want to be like "Oh well you have to use paypal or mail me a check"
seems most convenient to use creditcard.

hmm how does 2checkout work?the client doesnt need an account? they can just enter their Creditcard information into 2checkouts interface?.... so its basically like the user is paying cc through my h-sphere interface?

is the downfall that they have to load a 2checkout page? doesnt look professional?

well paypal seems like a good idea.. however the clients dont have paypal... they have credit card... I dont want to be like "Oh well you have to use paypal or mail me a check"
seems most convenient to use creditcard.

I believe paypal does have account optional for Canada by this time though (can anyone confirm this?). If so geestring you can mail your client a pay now or buy now button with their amount due and it will forward them to a page where they can select to pay via credit card or actually open an account (with account optional it is not necessary for the client to have a paypal account registered to use the payment service).

Just something to further look into in your selection geestring

ah i didnt know you didnt need a paypal account.

hmm paypal has the merchant account.... probably around $1 per transaction i would have to pay... so i guess it would be better to get them to pay yearly than recurring monthly.

hmm paypal has the merchant account.... probably around $1 per transaction i would have to pay... so i guess it would be better to get them to pay yearly than recurring monthly.

paypal presently has a merchant account solution plus their "merchant" level 3PP, the latter of the two options has the ability to use paypal account optional, pending on country of origin of the order pretty much.

I'm not fully sure what specific countries work with the account optional function, I know the US does and more than likely Canada (as they did add a few more countries to that feature a few months ago).

In any case geestring best of luck and be sure and look into things thoroughly. If you are not accepting alot of orders paypal should be fine (even if you are accepting alot paypal would still be fine but at that point it'd be cheaper to just offer it and also have a merchant account, as merchant accounts offer less fee side when you reach a certain point on sales).