Hello from Mississippi

[rogerdan]

Hi,

Thanks, glad that the links will stay put

[javabean]

I am curious, who are you using for credit card processing - are you doing it in real time or enter it in to a machine? Did you find a good rate?

I spent hours on this subject so I'm passing on what I've learned. In order to do automatic credit card processing online you'll have to get a merchant account + payment processing + add code to your site for the payment processing functionality.

Verisign has two options -

payflow link which will cost you 179 to set up + 20/month + 10 cents/transaction when you go over 50. With this option, the customer is sent by link to a credit card form hosted by verisign so they leave your site go to verisign then come back...

payflow pro which will cost you 249 to set up + 60/month + 10 cents/transaction when you go over 1000. With this option, you get an API and you have to figure out the code to add to your site to send the needed information to verisign. The customer stays on your site throughout the signup process but you have the hassle of trying to figure out a new API plus the additional cost is to me outragious.

So this is what I did...I'm encrypting the credit card information and storing it in a database with the rest of the house information. I decrypt it from my home computer. I set up a basic merchant account (not extremely happy with mine so find someone local) and I call in the card information to an 800 number they gave me. I chose this route for several reasons. 1 - Any disputions of charges should be low or non-existant. 2 - This is a family business and we have a very limited budget. 3 - We're just starting and the number of credit card listings that we get per week is low enough that we don't really need the automatic processing.

If/when we have enough transactions that we are begining to be bothered with calling in the card numbers we might decide to take a different path.

Oh and I've fixed the link so that they should get cached soon. As soon as I see that is has been cached I'll let you know so we can exchange links! Hope this was helpful and not too long.

[SanDiego]

Paypal is free to start and no monthly fees or account statement fees and cheaper in % from the charges.......Just FYI.. I have used it several times for many different creditcard accepting transactions and it works perfectly and people trust them.

Not a plug *** Just trying to help you save money...

[javabean]

But there again you redirect your customers off your site onto paypal and then they're redirected back to your site...For some reason that just bothers me.

Does it bother anyone else?

Plus the customers would have to set up a paypal account which adds complexity to the signup process. That's just why we didn't use them, not to say that it doesn't work well for others.

[SanDiego]

of course there will be draw backs with free Credit Card accepting companies...lol.. but just FYI .. They don't have to be paypal members to use it.. and yes, it always bothers me when people have to leave my sites...

[javabean]

Let's clarify this:

free Credit Card accepting companies...

Paypal charges a merchant fee based on the total transaction amount for the month.

$0 - $3,000 : 2.9% + 30 cents / transaction
$3,000 - $10,000 : 2.5% + 30 cents / transaction
$10,000 - $100,000 : 2.2% + 30 cents / transaction
over $ 100,000 : 1.9% + 30 cents / transaction

The rate I get with my provider is 2.25% + 25 cents / transaction . We are new so we haven't gotten over $3000 in transactions for one month yet so it's just not worth it for us, but it is a great value if you're monthly transaction rate is higher than $10,000/month.

[SanDiego]

free was meant that they don't ask you for $400 upfront.. If you NEVER sell anything.. it won't cost you.. if you sell one thing it cost you a few cents to a few dollars..
I am still bitter from being taken advantage of by Card Service USA that RIPPED me off years ago to do online CC accepting... Thousands of dollars spent and it all would have been thousands cheaper if I had just used the paypal thing ... My web design business was still profitable, just could have been MORE profitable ... I don't know the going rates and fees for CC companies now - This is all based on my experience with them 4-5 years ago when it was relatively newer to the internet scene...

Best of luck with your CC accepting prices and your business venture.