perfer something like paypal where they charge you a process fee and no setup fee or low setup fee.

There are a lot of merchant providers that offer Free Setups and very competitive rates that are better than PayPal.

Just keep in mind that there are monthly costs associated with having your own merchant account. They don't add up to a large amount - typically $25/month or so, especially if you sign up with a program that doesn't have a monthly minimum.

You'll just want to make sure to check out the reputation of any processor that you interview, ask them questions on how they handle chargebacks & risk issues and whether or not they provide their own direct customer & technical support.

I'd also recommend signing up with a merchant provider that has no early termination fee of any kind - that way if you ever do want to switch service or close your account you won't have to worry about getting hit with a large fee.

In terms of selecting a payment gateway, there are a lot of choices - you may want to ask each merchant processor what gateway they recommend for your needs as different gateways work best for different merchants. Some gateways have built-in recurring billing; others may be ideal for the 3rd party software application(s) you use.

Best of luck with your search!

i only have some customers. the monthly amount does not exceed $500. the reason i like paypal is there is no monthly fee. they charge per transaction. do you know if there any merchant account provider that will charge you per transaction and no monthly fee.

You might check out Propay and see if they suit your business needs

If you like Propay, make sure you find a good shopping cart for it. Mals-e lets you do manual processing and still have a shopcart (it's free). Also propaycart.com is actually real-time, but they do charge $12/year.