What are the rates for accepting credit card?

[TheLastWord]

Right now 99.99 percent of my sales are from eBay. My plan is to make a website (I already have a half done one) so my customers from eBay can shop from. I know I can get customers with my price and service as I have great success from eBay. Right now my PayPal rate is at 2.2 percent for buyers in US and Canada, 3.2 percent from buyers in other countries. Since my customers will mainly be from eBay I think using PayPal along with my website will do fine for now.

 

My big question say I do $5000 US each month from my website which checkout system should I start thinking of using? At that point I think PayPal will be quite costly. Also consider $5000 a month will be around 30 to 40 transactions a day. I will also need a checkout system that will be cheap for processing AUD, GBP, EUR currencies.

 

Right now it cost $1.79 AUD to process 62.98 AUD for customers in US and Canada, and

$2.42 AUD to process $62.98 AUD for customers everywhere else. I want to cut these fees as much as possible so I can offer even lower prices to my customers.

 

Any ideas what are the rates for some of the top cc processors.

[Jack_mcs]

You need to check with the various companies to know for sure. Authorize.net is probably the best way but each authorize.net reseller is free to charge different amounts so you still have to compare. In general though,

paypal IPN charges 2.9% + per item fee and no monthly fee

paypal PRO charges 2.2% + per item fee + monthly fee

Authorize.net charges 2.1% + per item fee + monthly fee (more that paypal pro)

 

The above percentages may not be correct but are close. Other options, like Linkpoint, are less than authorize.net. That seems to be the most costly but works the best, in my opinion.

 

Jack

[TheLastWord]

You need to check with the various companies to know for sure. Authorize.net is probably the best way but each authorize.net reseller is free to charge different amounts so you still have to compare. In general though,

paypal IPN charges 2.9% + per item fee and no monthly fee

paypal PRO charges 2.2% + per item fee + monthly fee

Authorize.net charges 2.1% + per item fee + monthly fee (more that paypal pro)

 

The above percentages may not be correct but are close. Other options, like Linkpoint, are less than authorize.net. That seems to be the most costly but works the best, in my opinion.

 

Jack

 

Does PayPal Pro allow transactions to be process on your website? Right now I would like a checkout as short as possible, but these are eBay customers so I think they already understand why PayPal checkouts are so long.

[Jack_mcs]

Yes, it does. However, there is (or at least was) a restriction with it that payment had to be in US funds. This may present a problem with your EBay customers. You should contact Paypal to doublecheck that.

 

Jack

[seanharper]

Yes, it does. However, there is (or at least was) a restriction with it that payment had to be in US funds. This may present a problem with your EBay customers. You should contact Paypal to doublecheck that.

 

Jack

 

 

You need to seperate the two parts of the value-chain.

 

First there are payment gateways: some like Authorize.net are independent, and some like Linkpoint are owned by credit card processors (Linkpoint is owned by First Data).

 

If you choose an independent like Authorize.net you can use any merchant account provider (credit card processor). If you use Linkpoint you can only use First Data or a company that subcontracts from First Data (there are many). Gateway fees will usually run you $0.05- $0.10 / transaction. They have a minimum fee of $15 that is prorated toward your transaction charges. Oftentimes your processor will pick up the tab for you (more often in the case of Linkpoint than authorize.net).

 

If you call authorize.net or linkpoint and are not currently processing credit card transactions they will refer you to a merchant account provider. However, you usually won't get the best deal on your merchant processing unless you shop around.

 

The merchant account providers like to quote one rate but just assuming that rate is quite deceptive because you will be charged more for many transaction types (for example, you get charged extra if your customer uses a rewards card and you will be charged extra if you key the transaction in on the virtual terminal rather than going through the API). There are also a bunch of misc. fees. that drive the price up.

 

Here is an article that explains the way the gateways work in more detail than I have in this post - http://www.informed-merchant.com/articles/...t-gateways.html