Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Ecommerce Hosting & Discussion : which creditcard processor to use? (international)

[stepan]

Hi there,

I was wondering what your opinions were on all the creditcard processors and which one would be the best for me to use... I'm located in Netherlands and will need to be able to accept worldwide. Still orienting which one to go with.. best price/quality etc.

Any tips and advice would be welcome.
Thanks

Stepan

[isalh]

i have 2checkout and paypal, the 2 work international (i think!) and i like paypal better. Website is faster and the navigation and tool is more easy to use.

[demonmoo]

I think 2checkout only does U.S. business.
That being said paysystems does international .

[freakysid]

2checkout.com accepts international businesses.

[jasonkw]

Paysystems has been great for us.

[Toeki]

2Checkout is setup instantly.
you are ready to accept payments right away.

Paysystems takes a few days to weeks to get setup.
The require you to sign and fax them the agreements.

We have both.

[james007]

PayPal is the worst, don't use it.

[Knogle]

I would suggest WorldPay - very highly recommended. If you don't have the budget, go for PaySystems, and last 2CheckOut. Have paypal as a secondary payment method.

WorldPay is used by many of the big boys and has proven itself to be a stable and trustable provider. Indeed, it had an extended outage days ago (for close to a day, i believe) due to DDoS attacks, but i'm confident that they've learnt their mistakes and beefed up security.

[Max Renn]

I'm in Ireland and use 2checkout and ccBill (for adult sites.)

Works fine for me

[H-U.net]

WorldPay is awesome.

If you search these forums you'll find complaint after complaint about 2checkout, PaySystems and PayPal - but only one or two for WorldPay.

Don't let the setup fee be prohibitive - it's an investment knowing that a professional company is looking after this side of your business.

Kevin

[Knogle]

H-U.net summed it up pretty nicely.

[Toeki]

I think thats because most people on WHT use 2CO, Paysystems and Paypal.

Originally posted by H-U.net
WorldPay is awesome.

If you search these forums you'll find complaint after complaint about 2checkout, PaySystems and PayPal - but only one or two for WorldPay.

Don't let the setup fee be prohibitive - it's an investment knowing that a professional company is looking after this side of your business.

Kevin

[voxunity.com]

2checkout or revecom

[Knogle]

Toeki, if you notice, even the most unheard-of hosts get reviews here. Why? Disgruntled customers want to let out their steam. Likewise for CC service providers.

Let me also state that WorldPay has many offices worldwide, and are only a phonecall away. They pick up their calls almost instantly and are very helpful. I've had first hand experience when i called their local office a few weeks ago during their outage.

Two thumbs up.

[phpa]

We're switching to WP and keeping 2checkout as a dormant backup system because of the recent fiasco with 2co and their ISP's failure to handle their 3rd batch of DDoS attacks, but there are many other reasons to switch too including cheaper processing than 2co. The latest DDoS was just the final straw.

Looking at WP a year ago they seemed more expensive, but actually they're probably going to be cheaper than 2co and offer more features. Here are the current figures for the UK.

Signup 100 gbp. Annual charge 160 gbp. Special xmas offer of 50 gbp allows us to accept card details and orders over the telephone, not something that we'll probably ever need but worth it if it helps just one customer someday.

Transaction charge 4.5% + 6 pence (for basic fraud checking) for most cards. In contrast 2co is 5% plus 45 cents, or for newer customers I believe 5.5%. The lower 4.5% will cover the annual WP charge easily, and therefore on charges they're actually about the same.

From an implementation point of view, the two businesses could not be more different. Doing due dilligence we checked the online WP documentation and found it to be excellent, very thorough, and showing a solid understanding and grasp of the technical issues related to site integration and the diversity of requirements. Not only do 2co provide poor integration tools, they are frequently struggling to meet even their own internal requirements with common problems such as replication being broken, poor database performance, apache internal server errors on customer payment pages, and so on.

With 2co you can also only accept payments in USD. With WP you can accept 3 currencies for free, and additional currencies should you need them are only a small amount extra. So, being in Europe, USD, EUR and GBP make the most sense. Payment from WP to business accounts can be in any currency, and you can nominate which bank account a transaction will be destined for on a per transaction basis. As we maintain both USD and GBP accounts we can exploit this to reduce our exchange rate exposure and potentially even profit from chosing to receive payments GBP or USD dependent on market conditions.

Integration features for WP payment pages are far more flexible than mere customisation of headers and footers with 2co. They also appear to support a multilingual interface and this is may be a further benefit.

Unless you signup during one of their bad periods, 2co are a useful starting point. Minimal startup costs of 2co may be attactive if you don't have the confidence that your business will make any money or last more than a couple of months, and getting up and running is quick and pretty straightforward, but it's a basic no frills system that hasn't improved in the 18 months we've been using it. WP will probably not be without their problems, and indeed we already have an issue over the pre-auth implementation as we'd like them to implement the option of an automatic transaction comit feature at the end of the 5 day preauth period, but other than moving to a true merchant account WP seems clearly to be one of the platforms that everyone should aspire to be using. The upside to any serious and professional business of using WP over 2co and some of the others seems clear and substantial.