eCommerce Alternatives for Credit Card Processing?

A non-Anonymous Coward asks: "More and more these days, small businesses are selling their goods on the Internet, and are looking for a way to process their sales. Aside from purchasing a merchant account, and setting up systems that meet the requirements set forth by the payment processors, what alternatives do small business owners have? There are a few online companies that will process the money for you, and take a small portion of that, such as PayPal, authorize.net, 2checkout.com, and a few others, but what is the easiest to setup, with little hassle?"

Comments

Easy:

[Noodlenose]

Either give the stuff away for free or barter. Peas, Beans, Potatoes, everything can be bartered in this brave new economy!

Re:Easy:

[Hard_Code]

Whuffie is much better. You don't have to keep it climate controlled, it never gets rotten and has no weight!

authnet is the way to go for many small businesses

[Anonymous Coward]

It's easy to set up, is basically standard in most shopping carts, and is brain-dead easy to implement yourself (a simple form post to create new transactions or work with existing ones).

On the other hand, PayPal is nice and can actually function as a barebones shopping cart (think a couple dozen "Buy" buttons) and obviously they accept credit card payments.

PayPal easiest

[Bitsy Boffin]

PayPal is the easiest, it allows your customers flexability in how they pay (either from thier Credit Card, or for US customers from thier bank, or if they already have money with PayPal from there), and it has a number of ways you can implement it from very simple buy now button, to properly integrating with thier IPN (Instant Payment Notification) system.

MoneyBookers (moneybookers.com) is fairly straight forward too, but doesn't have the brand recognition of PayPal, and it a bit more cumbersome.

2Checkout, again, not the brand recognition, it's pretty cumbersome too, it's a bit costly.

Authorize.Net, last I looked it was just a (very popular, almost a defacto standard) merchant gateway, you still need a merchant account with your bank, which may or may not be suitable.

The thing with Merchant accounts is that they will be cheaper, providing you are doing enough transactions to make it worthwhile, if you are just doing a few dollars here and there then I think PayPal is a better option - particularly now your customers do not need a PayPal account.

It all depends on the volume...

[Unholy_Kingfish]

..to find the right solution for you.

There are gateways, merchant account providers/processor and then your bank account. The gateway is the mechanism that "authorizes" the transaction; the processor actually gets the money which then gets put into your banking account (usually a 2 day delay). Watch out for merchant accounts that can't do online processing, yes some don't.

The biggest issue to consider is the actual transaction volume. This will determine which way to go.

If you are only dealing with a few transactions a week, Paypal might be the best system to use. Most people shopping online know what it is, who owns it, and trust it. They have probably the highest fee's per transaction since they take a percentage of the sale (I know it used to be that way don't flame). Minimal setup cost, many shopping carts have support for it, and all you need is a bank account(doesn't matter what kind) to get the money.

For volumes of 5-10 a day, a merchant account and a bank account is a must if you are going to do any real business. This will let you at the very least do a simple credit card capture online (do not capture CCV codes, it's a no no) and process the cards by hand on a terminal. It will cost you money to setup the account and get a terminal (cheaper to get a virtual terminal) but you will make your shoppers happy. Why happy? Because they put in their CC number and checkout just like in a brick and mortar. No Paypal account to deal with.

When you get to 20+ a day, you will not want to manually charge all those orders. You will need to get a gateway provider and make sure your merchant account works with it. I know Verisign(which sold the payment division to Ebay) is a little evil(TM), but their PayFlowPro gateway is SOLID SOLID SOLID. I have used a few different gateways ... all have had serious problems and blackouts. Verisign has had ONE unscheduled downtime in 2 years of using them, and it was for less than an hour. Plus they work with almost every merchant account. The downside with them is that they charge a monthly fee and a transaction fee per sale over 1000 a month. Another plus side is that you have flexibility to use almost any merchant account provider with them and negotiate merchant fees down as you volume grows.

We do minimally 150 transactions a day and the Payflow Pro works great for us. I know of companies doing 10 times that using the same system as us with zero problems. Plus Payflow Pro works with many backend accounting and order management systems.

Merchant Accounts, Payment Platforms

[Anonymous Coward]

I am a support analyst for a major point-of-sale software company. I deal with credit card issues every day. You want a merchant account, trust me. All of the alternatives cost too much in the long run. Secondly, avoid Abanco. They have frequent network problems. Thirdly, avoid any service that processes on the PC Charge platform. Their integration sucks. My favorite platform is Datacap (Mercury/Global Payments), because they're cheap and they have great uptime. Once again, Abanco sucks. And if you're paying more than, say, 1%, you are paying too much.

Re:Merchant Accounts, Payment Platforms

[psykocrime]

Thirdly, avoid any service that processes on the PC Charge platform. Their integration sucks.

PC Charge is crap. Stay as far away from it as possible. We wasted a simply ungodly amount of time and money waiting for them to get their support for First Data's internet protocol working. At one point they were sending us a new build about twice a week, insisting "this is the one that will work." It *never* worked and we finally switched to different software.

It all depends on the volume...CCNOW

[Anonymous Coward]

www.ccnow.com is also a good one, and it has a 30 day trial.

The ones mentioned are all CC centric

[SmallFurryCreature]

Yes even paypal. What Sony uses is Global Collect. They make it their business to know all the various methods of payment in all the corners of the world and collect the money for you. Bibit is a similar company but I am not sure how they operate now (implemented a pay site using their services that worked across europe).

CC are an american thing. Do not let anyone from the US tell you differently. IF you desire business from abroad your best bet is to offer real alternatives. Wire transfer and such are not alternatives, they are expensive and slow.

Global Collect or Bibit or similar companies are probably your best bet for true international payment. Let specialists deal with the collecting.

Please yanks, do not mention such things a debet cards or whatever. You are americans, you cannot understand that the rest of the world uses different systems. Every single time the issue of non-credit card owners paying online comes up there are always some yanks who somehow think they know how payment systems in europe work. It gets old

Re:The ones mentioned are all CC centric

[spacefight]

CC are an american thing

No they're not. They're everywhere. And yes, the rest of the world uses sometimes different systems but credit cards are used all over the world (yes, that means inclusive Europe) too.

My opinion is, that if you desire business from abroad (from an US point of view), credit card is still the best payment system as for now.

Re:The ones mentioned are all CC centric

[Scarblac]

No they're not. They're everywhere. And yes, the rest of the world uses sometimes different systems but credit cards are used all over the world (yes, that means inclusive Europe) too.

Yes, credit cards exist here. Not many people have them, they use them almost never, and many people would specifically never use them over the Internet. We're used to other ways of paying - a direct bank transfer is most usual, or payment by rembours (where you pay the post man). Payment by SMS for small amounts is growing. Currently gettng popular in the Netherlands is a system called "one time authorization", where you authorize the company to withdraw an amount from your bank account. There's a new system coming soon that will probably be very popular, that connects you to the online systems of your own bank, so you can do the transfer in that like you normally would, then it reports back to the website you bought from that the payment has happened (this relies on cooperation by all the large banks).

Credit cards are for nerds like me who sometimes buy things from US sites.

Re:The ones mentioned are all CC centric

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh *come on* - yes rembours is popular, but it's still a PITA, especially here in sweden where you have to go to the post office to pay!

Credit cards are growing to be as popular here as in the US, over the internet as well. Looking at the popular hardware and music stores here in sweden - once upon a time they only accepted bank transfers and rembours, but now they *all* accept credit cards as well.

About bank transfers - have you ever had to contest a bank transfer, when you didn't recieve the correct merchandise? I didn't think so. I have, and trust me, you'd never pay someone over the 'net that way again if you had.

Re:The ones mentioned are all CC centric

[spacefight]

No. Credit Cards are for everyone, not for nerds only. I know a lot of definitifely non-geeky/nerdy whatever people who order their books on amazon.de and let it deliver to Switzerland, paid of course by credit card. And there are movie tickets you can buy and print in advance with your credit card and yep, here as well, non geeky/nerdy folks are doing the same.

Again: Credit Cards are neither for geeks only nor are they "used almost never". I know, some countries are different within europe, but credit cards are here and being used a lot. A lot means over 58 Mio Visa/Mastercard Transactions in 2004 in Switzerland. Check your facts.

Re:The ones mentioned are all CC centric

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, credit cards exist here [in Europe]. Not many people have them,

Perhaps you should keep in mind that Europe is not just a single place. When I travelled in Scandinavia in the 1990s I was surprised to find people paying for groceries with plastic (which of course has since become commonplace in the States). Took a lot of the fun out of using foreign currency.

Re:The ones mentioned are all CC centric

[Anonymous Coward]

What the hell are you smoking? I'm not American (visited the place once), I'm from the UK. I've been to almost a dozen other European countries, some of them dozens of times. Credit/debit cards are most certainly not "an American thing". I can't remember the last time my credit or debit card couldn't be used to make transactions in the local shops of whatever country I was in, take money out of local ATMs, etc.

Exactly which countries in Europe are you talking about? Because you aren't talking about Spain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Greece, Cyprus, Ireland, or the UK.

Re:The ones mentioned are all CC centric

[Anonymous Coward]

Being a lowly, stupid American(tm), I'm humbled by your vastly superior intelligence, and was surprised to find I was able to understand most of your post. Clearly I've benefitted mentally by being in your presence, and hope someday to be smart enough to post a good reply to you.

Until then, I'm hungry. Now where's my Big Mac ...

PS- It's amusing that while you berate Americans for assuming other countries use the same payment methods they're used to, you make wide-reaching claims that the methods *you* are used to are more prevalent ... without any facts backing that up. Heh.

Re:The ones mentioned are all CC centric

[pooh666]

How about China? Everywhere? Or just the west? Think before your post... Yes, I know this is Slashdot...

Re:The ones mentioned are all CC centric

[StandardDeviant]

Why would an American small-to-medium business want to deal with foreign customers? (A company large enough to not be a member of the SMB class wouldn't be posting here asking for ecomm advice. ;))

1) Vastly greater incidence of fraud (see next point)
2) Vastly more complicated financial and legal proceedings
3) Vastly more complicated and expensive shipment processes for physical products
4) Vastly more expensive marketing costs
5) to all the above, add the "fun" of i18n/l10n and every grotesque language barrier complication possible

The only other country that is of much interest to the small business owners I know here in the US is Canada because the barrier to entry for that market is just low enough to make it practical. For the most of them, however, the marginal gains and marginal costs associated with trying to leave the American economic base are simply not practical. There's a lot of "headroom" to grow in our economy before it becomes a requirement to expand abroad to maintain growth.

Re:The ones mentioned are all CC centric

[bergeron76]

What Sony uses is Global Collect.

Sorry - but as shitty as our government is, our country typically requires accountability. Sony is a very poor example case for us.

Re:The ones mentioned are all CC centric

[spacefight]

If you assume that companies in China do not accept credit cards, think before you post.

Re:The ones mentioned are all CC centric

[Scarblac]

Shrug. I worked at several Internet shops, prepaid by bank transfer and rembours were the only options. I have a credit card, so I was paying the Hattrick subscriptions of ten people before they introduced payment methods where we could use a one time authorization instead.

All post means is that it's probably completely different for every European country as well...

Re:The ones mentioned are all CC centric

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, and you are european -- if it's impossible for an American to know anything about europe, then I submit that it's also impossible for a european to know anything about America. Your condescending euro attitude gets old, too.

The ones mentioned are all CC centric-YRO.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Every single time the issue of non-credit card owners paying online comes up there are always some yanks who somehow think they know how payment systems in europe work. It gets old"

No! Every time theres a yro on copyright/government/business, the exact same arguments being used for the past several years. Now THAT'S old! Discussing international payment systems is a breath of fresh air by comparison.