Ok, I'm 19 and I want to start my own webhosting company, and I will go for the ***** Reseller Program. I know I'm young, but I also know I have the business skills plus experience to start the business from light and later develop it to something big and hopefully well known. I have been looking for merchant accounts that can process CC's in real time, that is, as soon as the customers signs up, the money is transfered directly to my bank account. Unfortunately, I do not dispose of the funds needed (Startup of about 300-500 dollars) in order to have a fully branded and customizable E-commerce solution for my new hosting company. Therefore, I would like to know how companies do when they just ask for all your info incl. CC info but do NOT process the fee in real time, that is, they charge the cards once a day or something like that. What is the program, or the portal used in order for me to charge credit cards manually? or well, the question is, is it possible? Cause I know ***** don't charge your credit card instantaneously, they even ask you to send them a fax proving that you are the owner of the CC that has been submitted. Also, relying on the fact that I live outside of North America (therefore, all bank transfers and wiring become a bit more complicated) I see that it will be even harder for my company to get a good E-commerce solution. So, is this possible? Can I charge credit cards manually? and if the answer is yes...how do I do this?? Thanks guys..

and I will go for the ***** Reseller Program. I know I'm young, but I also know I have the business skills plus experience to start the business from light and later develop it to something big and hopefully well known

I stopped reading after this ... if you had good buisness sense youd stay well away from *****. do a search on this forum and youll see why. Here are a few reseller programs worth looking at -

http://www.hostmatters.com
http://www.kdawebservices.com
http://www.hostrocket.com

Ok, nevermind *****...
My question was actually about the Credit Card processing and has nothing to do with *****, can you please read the post again and answer my question? I would greatly appreciate it, thanks...

if you dont have your own bank business bank account try a service like http://www.worldpay.com you can do it instantly or manually.

Here's my suggestion:

Go with ECHO for the merchant account (http://www.echo-inc.com choose the Echonline service). You have to develop a script for it, but if you would like we have one already and could work something out. It's $99.00 startup, and the only recurring charge is $10.00 for a "Technical Support fee" (that's only if your account has any activity). No statement fee. No AVS fee (I love that). Chargebacks are free for the first 5 and $5.00 thereafter. Good company, but like I said you have to develop the software. This includes a free checking account.

As for your secure server go to https://www.equifaxsecure.com/s3/process.html (it's only $68.00 by going through this link). Between the two you'll have full real-time creditcard exceptance for $167.00 :).

Note: ECHO Online only offers Visa & Mastercard, you'd have to sign up with AMEX, Discover ect. seperately.

Beat that charge.com :)

Echo is good. But most CC processors have some kind on interface, be it software or a secure web page, that let's you manually enter charges. Echo has a telephone (touch tone) entry plan, but it has a low monthly limit ($1500 or so I think).

I'm with http://www.sfcommerce.com and have setup everything I need to process online using a component they send out to their clients. You can view a demo at https://secure.webfors.com

If you don't want to process in realtime you can just use the Manual Transaction Tool that is available in an admin area that you get access to with every account.

This is very easy to setup.

Originally posted by tabernack
I'm with http://www.sfcommerce.com and have setup everything I need to process online using a component they send out to their clients. You can view a demo at https://secure.webfors.com

If you don't want to process in realtime you can just use the Manual Transaction Tool that is available in an admin area that you get access to with every account.

This is very easy to setup.


I'm gonna go with http://www.revecom.com since my business is based in Europe, and these peeps seem to be the best at what I need....a nice feature they have is that they offer my clients a toll free number to call in case they don't want to supply their CC on the web. Great thing with these peeps also is that they charge one setup fee of 49.95 and that's it, discount rate is at 3,9% with a 1 dollar transaction fee, and they send the check out twice a month. Sound good no?

Well we use Revecom and haven't had any complaints with them so far

Greg Moore

3.9% is a little high if their charging $1 per transaction. I pay %2.75 with $.25 transaction fee.

You might have to ask your clients to pay for 6 months at a time to avoid the high $1 transaction fee.

But, I have heard many good things about them on this board.

Originally posted by tabernack
3.9% is a little high if their charging $1 per transaction. I pay %2.75 with $.25 transaction fee.

You might have to ask your clients to pay for 6 months at a time to avoid the high $1 transaction fee.

But, I have heard many good things about them on this board.

Ok, but does your processor charge you a monthly fee? and what is their setup cost? DO they accept clients outside of the US and Canada? that is...with International bank accounts??

Originally posted by WoBber
Ok, but does your processor charge you a monthly fee?[QUOTE]
Nope. Some plans have a monthly minimum in transaction fees. Depends on the type of business, risk... etc..
[QUOTE]and what is their setup cost?[QUOTE]
$250
[QUOTE]DO they accept clients outside of the US and Canada? that is...with International bank accounts??
Hmmm...They accept clients from anywhere in the world.

WOW, sorry about that. Not sure what happened with my post. :D

Originally posted by Jaiem
Echo is good. But most CC processors have some kind on interface, be it software or a secure web page, that let's you manually enter charges. Echo has a telephone (touch tone) entry plan, but it has a low monthly limit ($1500 or so I think).

Like I said you DO have to develop your own software for the real-time processing, which is a pain BUT echo then allows you (ISP's) to resell your software (offer your own gateway). As for the secure web page to enter credit card numbers they offer that also, it's called ECHOnet. You can actually setup ECHOnline and ECHOnet. Together the cost is STILL only $198 and a $25 per year fee. Which is still cheaper then most others. Especially since neither service has a gateway fee/monthly minimum ect. The $1500 is the MAXIMUM sales per month via the telephone service. The only program that requires a monthly minimum is the software version. Plus they offer Visa/Mastercard and you can add Amex/Discover/Diners Club at any time.

[Edited by comphosting on 03-11-2001 at 03:19 AM]

Hello
I think if you are starting out something like http://www.instabill.com/ makes absolute sense.
You pay 10% with no monthly or annual charges and get paid twice each month.
Also, you do not need a good credit rating.

We still use them for Amex and discover card, but our main processing is done on Worldpay.com (5% commission on credit cards 50p approx 70c on debit cards) Annual fee of £125/$175
They also run automated monthly billing (so do Instabill).

The only problem with Worldpay is that you need to have enough capital to cover your monthly trabsactions.
As our monthly transactions are around $10,000 we needed to provide evidence of the value of my house.......

Gordon

All other alternatives I have heard so far are much more expensive then the one I mentioned. PLUS, the software (component to process in realtime) is free. No yearly fee, and low transaction fees.

It's up to you, but I personally would not want to give %10 to my payment processor. It's like throwing money out the window :D

Revecom does offer a lot of features though.

It depends on what you're looking for, plus your own business strength. To many, starting with a full merchant account is business suicide as incoming accounts won't outweigh the cost of processing them. This is where Revecom, Instabill, PayPal *shudder*, and others come into their own. It's a good way to test the waters. As the business grows you can develop into merchant systems and migrate clients to them (if you so wish).

I'm a person who believes the way to business success is sustained, positive growth. We've always run in the black and don't have a debt in the world. No gambling on big expenditure in the hope throwing cash at a problem will reap benefits :) I think our customers are a little too important to risk their income on personal gain.

A full merchant account has a serious benefit in regards to the ability to set billing for fully with extra features dynamically etc, but for most people a plain old system like the ones mentioned is more than enough. It takes a little more leg work, but half of hosting is about exactly that - you only get back what you put into it.

Greg Moore

Originally posted by tabernack
All other alternatives I have heard so far are much more expensive then the one I mentioned. PLUS, the software (component to process in realtime) is free. No yearly fee, and low transaction fees.


Looking into this one as an option. Revecom is starting to get a little crowded I think.. Maybe we sent them too many new customers but the last month or so has been a little slack on their part. The API is still not happening over a month after it was suppose to.. No ability to use your own forms etc etc... Maybe we're just outgrowing them...

Greg Moore

For Tabernack re http://www.sfcommerce.com

I'm confused, you say that the prices are cheaper at sfcommerce.com, but I can't find any prices listed on the web site.

What are we comparing against? Am I looking at the wrong site?

Dave

Dave,

there's none in the info-pack they e-mail out to you either :) You migh have to press them on the issue I think...

Greg Moore

comphosting, won't that post considered advertising on your part? :)

Wobber, take a look at charge.com. From what I heard, they use authorize.net for their real time processor. No setup fee and only $199 for the real time software (most other company charge up to $495 for the same software). The discount rate os 2.35% with $0.30 transaction fee. They have minimum transaction fee of $25 and statement+gateway fee of $25. So the total minimum fees is $50/mo. I personally think this is better than revecom since revecome charges $1 per transaction and 3.95% discount rate, not a good solution if you are selling only $10 of merchandise (or even less), so about 14% of your tota sale (about 5.5% of your total sale with charge.com).

if you expect around $750/mo or more worth of transaction then going with charge.com will be cheaper than revecom, otherwise, revecome will be cheaper. CMIIW. How much sales do you anticipate in the near future (3mo, 6 mo, from now?)

Anyway, good luck...

cheers,
:beer:

I checked into charge.com - they are reseller for worldpay.com. The fees seem pretty much the same so I guess it's your call to which one you go for in that regard. The problem with them as I see it you're still stuck with using their payment server (like Revecom), with their idea of design for the forms.

What I'm personally looking for something I can use onsite and just legally pass the information via SSL to their server. Revecom *was* going to offer that in an API, but no word on it, and support getting pretty poor I'm looking at packing my bags. Sad though - for the most part they've been pretty good until lately.

As I know Revecom reads these boards, maybe someone there will give we paying customers some firm answers to some pretty important questions... Payment errors and down servers just don't cut it.

Greg Moore