I am an amateur in this area, so forgive me if I use terms incorrectly. My company (headquartered in Canada) has a web store with a merchant account with Moneris, which is affiliated with a Canadian bank. We are restricted to accepting payments in US$ or Canadian $. We need to begin accepting payment in Euro at a minimum, and ideally in Yen as well.

We currently pay approximately 3% per transaction for this merchant account. My finance department claims that merchant accounts that also accept Euro would cost between 15% and 20% per transaction.

Is this true? Can anyone recommend a reliable, reasonably priced alternative?

Thanks!

There are alot of European processors that can help you with your multi currency issue. Most of them will have fees in the range of 3 - 5,75% depending on your volume and type of business. On top of this there might be transaction, monthly and setup fee.

The problem could be that many European psp's require that your are incorprated in at least europe. There are a few that dont require this.

Hope this helps.

In order to be able to process with EU banks, you must have an EU incorporation.

In order to open a direct account with a European acquirer (like what you have with Moneris, your own descriptor, etc.) to process in Euro you will need to form an EU Corp in order to comply with cross-border acquiring regulations. You can avoid Corporation formation by using a Third Party Processor, but a direct account is usually preferrable.

Its very common for offshore acquirers to hold a reserve as a hedge against chargebacks/losses. While this is not techincally a fee, since you get the funds back eventually, it can be considered a transaction cost.

If you factor in a discount rate of 3- 5.75% and a transaction fee of $0.35 - $0.50 and a reserve of 5-10%, then you can get pretty close to a cost of 15-20% per transaction.

Why do I need to have an account with a "European acquirer"? Aren't there North American service providers who will accept credit card payments in Euro?

I think that I remember hearing that Well's Fargo in the US offer a multi-currency product. You can also look at Worldpay.

Worldpay can definetely do it.