Anyone doing business online (and actually takes money from other people) must, at some point, bite the bullet and choose a company credit card processor - which can be very costly decision .
There are actually two different ways of going about it: you can either go to the free accounts or merchant accounts.
But what can we distinguish between the two? After all, they both allow you to accept a payment from a holder of a credit card?
Well, yes, they allow you to accept payment by credit cards with people - but there are some fundamental differences behind and you should be aware of.
Allows you to take a look at merchant accounts (ICann, WorldPay or 2Checkout - just as examples), when you enter one of these guys, you have to provide information about your company and prove that you are actually a registered business.
You will also have to pay a setup fee, from personal experience, I know that this may be in the range of several hundred dollars, you must also pay a yearly subscription or support - again this is typically a few hundred dollars per year.
You might think that this is OK - but remember that you are also paying a percentage of the transaction value, it can be anything up to 4.75%.
From this information alone, we can see that for the little guy is quite a high cost - especially if you are a beginner and you do not even know if your product / service is going to take off.
There are also other things that you need to be aware of the professionals, if we look at the merchant accounts, for example 2Checkout will occasionally try to contact your customers actually (a selection of) and to verify that goods have arrived - if they can not, they will potentially refund ALL currently detained sales.
I mention this because I have been made aware of 2CO operandi of politics (this morning) by one of my classmates online marketing - this guy lost $ 5000 because 2CO telephoned to the wrong person and allows to deal with them, once you have delivered the goods and received a refund How many people will say: "Yes, here's my credit card again" - unlikely - and then annulled on behalf of merchants without saying so sorry .
So, in other words, make sure you read the fine print - there are usually things in there which is not really in your best interest.
Anyway, it's pretty on merchant accounts, can now consider the free accounts - and the first thing to do is to be aware that there is no such thing as' free ' . With free accounts you typically do not pay the costs of installing, or even an annual fee - you do, however, pay a percentage of the transaction value, it can go from 1.5% to 4%.
The two main providers of free accounts are PayPal and StormPay. It should be noted that, even though they are both pretty similar services there are advantages and disadvantages associated with each.
For example, StormPay generally slightly higher costs per transaction and PayPal - PayPal, however, pay more to get your money then StormPay. PayPal is also VERY quickly to respond to allegations of misconduct play (if it exists or not) and usually very slow to do anything about it (in addition to close your account).
PayPal also has some strange habits in terms of laundering, for example my brother played on Ebay and make a few dollars here and there - nothing suspicious about this law (especially since eBay owns PayPal), but for some reason, while his Balance has gone past $ 50 they locked her account for a few weeks and sent him messages asking for proof of identity and want an explanation of where the money had come '.
None of these problems with the storm, they validate at registration effectively linking you to your credit card to your address - all suspicious transactions are monitored on a more gentlemanly. At the time of writing, I have not heard of someone using Storm Pay having their account blocked for reasons that were questionable.
In terms of the entry in service StormPay is by far the fastest and in terms of market saturation is also increasing and over (PayPal is the standard established StormPay but is catching up quickly).
One thing to remember, regardless of the type of payment processor you use, is that if a customer asks for a refund of 9 times out of 10, they will get it - unless you can satisfy your processor you have done everything they need (for a PayPal if you send tangibles you need proof of postage that identifies what you send, in the case of alleged non-delivery " proof it was received - and there is still no guarantee that they rule you In your favor).
An important distinction between processors payment relates to geography, ie in the world where they accept payments from. Most of the free services do not accept payment of Central Africa or South East Asia, it is purely to do with the level of fraud (Think Nigeria).
In summary, for any new activity that has little or no customer base and has no idea if their bids will be received by the market, it is better to start with a free account, my personal recommendation is Storm Pay. If your company develops later and requires specific functionality merchant account, you can always upgrade or to choose a market.