Recommendations for Website Payment Systems?

An anonymous reader asks: "I run a smallish website that provides stock quotes, charts, etc for a very under-reported stock market. (I won't link here due to the Slashdot Death Ray effect, and because this is a real question, not an advertisement). Over the recent weeks, many of my site members have been asking if they could make a small contribution to help off-set costs, which I am considering. 'Tip Jars' seem tacky and I know many people aren't comfortable with Paypal. So, should I roll my own, or are there any highly recommended ways of doing this that I am missing? Any suggestions?"

Comments

yahoo stores

[a11]

http://store.yahoo.com/ lets you set up a store that takes credit cards directly. you could "sell" contributions in various amounts.

zerg

[Lord Omlette]

Rolling your own is begging to be owned.

Ignore people's unease, the real reason you don't want to go w/ paypal is the massive bite they take out of whatever people send you. You can't even ask people to donate a quarter because the entire quarter disappears.

Google for "amazon honor system" (minus quotes). I can't link you directly because it'll probably end up w/ a referral to me in the URL. ^^;; It might be what you're looking for.

Alternatively, for webcomic creators, Scott McCloud suggests trying BitPass, Yaga or Peppercoin...

Amazon Honor System

[Eric Giguere]

If you're based in the US, the Amazon Honor System is an option if your users are PayPal-wary.

Eric
See your HTTP headers here

Re:Paypal?

[fm6]

Most of the people who are uncomfortable with Paypal are the ones who think whining about it makes them seem experienced or intelligent.

I'm sorry, but that's a bigoted, arrogant attitude. There are a lot of legitimate complaints against Paypal relating to poor customer support and indiscriminate anti-fraud measure that often victimize innocent people. Even the complaints against Paypal that don't have a legitimate basis are mostly from people who can't accept that Paypal doesn't indemnify against fraud. Which is certainly lame, but not the sort of nonsense you describe.

That said, Paypal is my first choice for all online transactions. Every system has problems, but Paypal doesn't do all that badly, compared to the alternatives.

Send donations to...

[jgardn]

Why not ask for checks in the mail? It seems to work for the credit card companies. It doesn't sound like you want to hide your sneakernet address.

If the contributions were going to be typically large and more numerous (more than $20 and thousands a month), then it would make sense to talk to your bank to get one of those machines to make CC transactions. Then ask for their credit card information on a secure section of the site. Store the transactions in a database, and then type them all in at the end of the day. It's not too difficult to do many an hour if you have a fast connection to your bank. I know because I used to deliver pizzas and we'd have to type in tips at the end of the day.

If you're going to have more than that, then it makes sense to get involved with one of the online credit card companies. They have some pretty strict requirements but it isn't too difficult to get into business with them. And it would save you a lot of time over driving to the bank to deposit checks or typing in CC transactions.

Re:Paypal?

[vince1]

Most of the people who are uncomfortable with Paypal are the ones who Think whining about it makes them seem experienced or intelligent.

Excuse the bluntness, but that is pure bull crap! Take a look at the thousands of horror stories in the Paypal Wall of Shame on http://paypalwarning.com/.

I would say that class actions lawsuits and thousands of horror stories are very legitimate reasons to be "uncomfortable" with dealing with a company. Unless you are an idiot.

As it says on the paypalwarning.com site:

Can PayPal hold my money with no explanation? The answer is YES.
Can PayPal freeze my account for no reason? The answer is YES.
Can PayPal take money out of my account without my knowledge?
The answer is YES.

We used to use Paypal to sell on eBay but after finding it impossible to to update our credit card and having no phone number to resolve problems, we started searching the net to see what kind of other problems people were having. When we found the Wall of Shame, we closed the account and closed the bank account it was linked to before we became one of the victims.

I wish more people would boycott companies that treat people so dirty and quit rewarding them just because it appears to be convenient today.

Big players

[Bitsy Boffin]

The only two real options are
a) Paypal - sure a few people get turned off by it, but they are probably not your audience. This is the easiest way if you want to accept payments in USD/CAD/JYP/GBP/EUR or AUD.

b) Moneybookers (moneybookers.com) - like paypal with a few differences. If you sign up for thier merchant program you can use them to accept CCrds in the same way as you can with Paypal, except that.
1. No chargebacks. Moneybookers is "hard" currency, once you have it it's yours to keep.
2. More currencies. Moneybookers allows you to accept payments (and hold balance) in more currencies than paypal.
3. To pay via credit card your users will (the first time they do) will either need an SMS capable cellphone handy (they send a confirmation code to it so they at least have a known-good cellphone number) or a fax machine.

The other options (2checkout.com, a real merchant account etc..) would likely be too expensive and too much trouble.