Cheap Payment Gateway

[Dudester]

Hi,
I know similar questions to this have been asked already, Im just hoping for a better answer !!

I am setting up a small online store and I need a credit card payment gateway.
I will probably only be taking 1 sale a month if that !! Under $500 per year.
SO, I do NOT want to pay all these rediculous fee's on top of fee's.
Even just the Merchant bank account fee's will probably wipe out my profit, so I am asking is there an easier way ??
Is there a way of taking credit card payments without the need for a Merchant Acc ?

I guess, good ole Paypal or what about Paymate are the go ??

Thanks,

[dferguson]

Hi

Without trying to be rude, whats the point of starting a store if the goal is to barely break even?

I would reccommend PayPal or PayMate for this level of transactions as they dont charge much startup or ongoing fees.

PayPal for USD transactions
PayMate for AUD transactions.

[dudester]

David,
My project is just a hobby at this stage, if there's enough interest it may become something more, who knows...
The only expense I have is hosting & domain name reg which are well under $50 a year, so making $500 is far from breaking even !

I may not be in the same league as you guys but Im sure there are plenty of people like me who are knocked off their chair at all the costs involved in setting up a payment gateway.

Anyway,
Yes, I keep comming back to Paypal or Paymate.
Does anyone have any feedback from Paymate....?

Dudester.

[dferguson]

Hi

Paymate is the reccommended payment solution for www.ebay.com.au (ebay Australia). I believe its used a lot by ebay sellers hence paymates service/price must be quite good.

[Edit: ebay now reccommends PayPal]

[mark]

David
we are going to set up .uk sites for ink cartridges - helps that we have an agent living in the uk

we paypal a lot as it is -

are there plans for 3.7 /8 to have paypal as an option upon checkout ?

[craig]

Dudester

We use both PayPal and Paymate for our ebay auctions and have never had any problems with either of them.

Most of our sales (probably 4200 out of 4800ish) have prefered to pay via Direct Deposit, 400 odd by Paypal and about 200 by Paymate.

It would seem that most Australian customers prefer and are comfortable with the Direct Deposit Method. This is a payment option in the current version of this software.

ps. Most of our sales from this site pay by Direct Deposit as well.

Craig

[craig]

Mark

Paypal is already an option in the payment gateway.

We can't use it though as our site is in Australian $ and the interface only accepts US$

Craig

[dferguson]

V3.7 of ezimerchant already has the paypal option.

Currently PayPal supports USD, EUR (euro), GBP, CAD and JPY. [Update: PayPal now supports AUD)

You could use ezimerchant for your UK based ink site with PayPal in either EURO or GBP currency.

[davidel]

Hi All,
I've seen paypal and paymate displayed on may sites, but I have never used them. I am interested to hear if they are a good idea to add to our existing payment options for customers. So please tell me ;

1. what is paypal, how is it setup and how does it work.
2. our site is in AUD - is that a problem?
3. can it be added as an addition to our payment methods?

ta

[dferguson]

Hi David

1. PayPal is designed for small/Micro businesses who do not already have a merchant account. It allows you to accept card payments without having a merchant account with your bank. They charge higher fees than the banks for their service.

2. Yes, PayPal currently does not support AUD. When they do it will work with ezimerchant. [Update: PayPal now supports AUD, new ezimerchant versions will allow you to use PayPal in AUD]

3. Not if your site is in AUD. [Update: PayPal now supports AUD, new ezimerchant versions will allow you to use PayPal in AUD]

[davidel]

Thanks for the answers.
for our business of Ozeyarn, we started out wanting to do realtime transactions, so went straight down the gateway/merchant account route. Initially just supporting Visa and Mastercard, we added Amex later (when their rates became a little more competitive) and also Australian Bankcard, as we were getting more Australian customers. We have had only a very small percentage of manual orders. Perhaps only one ot two customers have ever asked about some other card or payment scheme - Dinner's Club or PayPal. I think Americans are used to seeing PayPal, so they ask about it.

Just a note about online orders. We do true real-time transactions. When the customer places an order on our site, the GTS sends it to the DirectOne gateway, which authenticates and drops the payment into our merchant account.

Some sites say they provide "secure online transactions" - but they don't mean completely automated. Their system takes the order info securely, then sends an email to the site owner who manually does the transactions. They save money in not having a gateway or a merchant account with online facility, but they are not true online transactions. Still, this is sometimes the best way to start a new web business off.

[simoncs]

Hi,

I am just about to create a website and wish to have an e-commerce component to it. We are setting up a clubnight and so the only thing we have to sell is tickets (and maybe some merchandise -but that will come later). I have looked at various options, but basically want the cheapest way to set this whole lot up.
Don't want to start with merchant accounts so will use paymate.
Is a shopping cart product really necessary/the easiest way to go? Bearing in mind i can't program php or mysql - i can cope with creating a website in frontpage or dreamweaver though.
We also wanted to have some kind of database on the site to hold customer details, for a couple of reasons.
1.Planning on people picking up tickets on the door - so need to know names and maybe card number
2. possibility of customers coming back to site to order -so they have username/password
3. possibility of an email list for future events.

Do these shopping cart products handle that as well?

Please excuse my ignorance in this - i came across this forum as a 1st port of call.

thanks

Simon

[dferguson]

Hi Simon

There are easy,simple and cheap ways to sell tickets online with Paymate.

Example: On your website you can create a single (or more) 'BUY TICKET NOW' buttons which when clicked will take the customer to the PAYMATE website and take the ticket order.

This will get you selling tickets at the cheapest price. (no shopping cart, no payment gateway)

I would reccommend you speak to Paymate about your requirements.

ezimerchant Pro will give you a shopping cart and when customers order, their order details will go into a database for you to track - but it wont give your site a log in feature for returning customers (higher end andmore complicated ecommerce solutions can).

ezimerchant Pro also has an upfront price and ongoing monthly fees. For your situation I would probably reccommend my first suggestion and see how it goes.. Maybe you will sell heaps online and it will be worth spending a little more to get the features you require.

[john]

Hi David,

What sort of checks do paymate do to authenticate the credit card holders details. eg do they ensure that the credit card holders address matches the address given on the paymate form?
Do merchants need to do further checks on a purchaser beyond what paymate or paypal do?

Regards (PS how do you start a new thread??)

[dferguson]

Hi

You will need to speak to PayMate to confirm your question.. But as fair as im aware they do more than simply process the card.. To protect themselves more than anything I guess!

Also, Australian banks do NOT support address verification.. so its not possible to do.

P.S Goto the section you want to create a new thread in and click the NEW THREAD button. e.g goto PAYMENT GATEWAYS and you will see a big NEW THREAD button. (it doesnt appear in topics - which is probably why you couldnt work it out)

[maxchirag]

hello everyone,
i m also facing the same prob. my prob is , i m in final year of my B.E In Information Technology prog. and i nee to devlope a project(web application) in final sem, i decided to devlope a E-commerece project so i need cheap or free merchant account and payment gateway coz i m not able to pay anything right now coz i m not devloping project for benifit its just my study level project. i dont have any prob with prog lang. like PHP or .NET but i have only prob with the fees and charges of payment gateway and merchant account. onemore thing if anyone here can suggest a alternate for online credit card processing then please give ur suggetion to me..
thank you
regard Chirag

[steve]

Chirag, I would suggest to get a merchant account if if your expected volume is over $1,000 per month coz even though you will incur extra fees for your monthly statement and processing gateway, you will still save money versus 3PP and will have much more flexibility with the whole process otherwise you can simply go for 3PP. If your intended market is US you can check it with paypal or 2co and if it is intended for EU, ChronoPay can offer you a 3rd party solution as well as an own merchant account, they can also offer you a virtual terminal at no extra costs. With their 3rd party solution there are no monthly fees and no set up fees.

[Lloyd-SSI]

I am in Aus. and looking for a merchant account and payment gateway and the same as everyone else cheapest we can find.

We will be handleing a large number of transactions per month but all at costs around $5. So 20c out of the already small profit margin adds up.

I'm looking at VeriSign but came across NetRegistry's e-Commerce payment gateway which boasts only a $55 per month flat fee. Has anyone delt with them?

Another questions is even though the payment gateway charge per transaction would I then still expect a per transaction fee from my merchant bank?

And yes I do need to do transactions in real time.

Thanks for any replies.

Lloyd

[dferguson]

HI Llyod

NetRegistry is a big reputable company, you shouldnt have any real problems with their $55.00 per month plan.

You will of course pay the banks a cut for each transaction - 1.8% roughtly or maybe more due to the low value of each transaction. the banks like high transaction values rather than low transaction values.

[Lloyd-ssi]

Thanks for the reply,

I have a quote back from our current bank but it invloves useing thier payment gateway and not a 3rd party. It is a staggering 4.95% with many other fees for start up, annual, and monthly...

Establishment Fee: $99.00

Annual Participation Fee: $29.95

Monthly Secure Gateway Fee: $39.95

Merchant Service Fee (MSF): 4.95%

Minimum Monthly MSF: $50.00



2 Year contract, cancellation fee: $500


it really seems like a fairly large part of my service will be transaction fees...

Would you see the price per transaction dropping by useing a 3rd party gateway?

would you also see me loseing the monthly gateway fee?

Sorry for all the questions I'm trying to learn as much as I can before going ahead with plans.

Cheers Lloyd

[dferguson]

eeeech!

I would say that the high % fee is due to your low average transaction value.. Time to talk to a few different banks.

Goto www.eway.com.au and have a chat with them, they are experts at communicating with the banks and may be able to help you out more.

[steve]

When you are looking for payment gateways you should give priority on "reliability" of a processor rather than "cheap", Cheap payment gateways can let you process your transactions for few months and then freeze your funds for few months and may put you in trouble without any reason.