How to Take Payment On Your Website

Hi Julian,

I'm looking into the same thing right now - for some reason I'm finding it all mind boggling as well. My so-called understanding thus far is this:

Paypal and CB (these are the main ones but there others) act as the merchant - so technically the customers are theirs not yours. Also refunds are in their hands. CB is famous for high refund rates.

Not sure about 2checkout as my research turned up a lot of complaints about lousy customer service - these threads were 2+ years old but I have found nothing to ensure me the customer service issues have gone away.

Authorize.net seems pretty pricey but they do provide true processing services where you are actually the merchant. This means the customer information belongs to your company and not theirs. They are also a "wholesaler" so they have many resellers competing for your business.

Now I'll take things from the bottom up:

Authorize.net - watch out for fees - I think these are what may be the killer. In addition to transaction fees, there are batch fees, transfer fees, fee fees (I"m only half-kidding). There are even fees for recurring charges - something I'm interested in.

Paypal - I've narrowed down the other sot just PP. They are easy to use and you pay for the privilege. The fees tend to be higher though incremental. The other danger I've heard about is paypal seems to like to freeze accounts without warning. The fact is I've heard this problem with just about every type of processor but pp seems to lead the pack.

With all the fees - there are two types - monthly and per transaction. With smaller volumes your overall costs tend to be higher and therefore a processor like pp is more competitive. As your volume rises, those monthly fees take a smaller chunk out of each transaction, thus making it more economical to go with something like Authorize.net.

One more caveat - the site I'm looking to buy now used pp so there is no way to "transfer" subscribers to me - remember they are technically pp's customers not the site owner's. This makes it harder to transition, easier to lose members and revenue. The owner recommended I switch if I have an eye towards flipping the site. While I have every intention of buying and holding in this case, who knows the future?

Realistically... how much volume do you expect to generate? It looks like I'm paying between 03 - 06+ % for US transactions via pp. I'm glad I did the math because I was thinking around 10% overall.

With authorize (their "retail" pricing) I'm looking at $20 per month plus $10 for recurring charges for $30 per month plus a $0.25 batch fee (processing a batch of cc transactions so they are deposited in your bank account) and a $0.10 transaction fee - most processors also charge a percentage like 02.5% I don't see such a charge here. I know some of their resellers so this.

Discounting the percentage and batch fees right now - 100 transactions would cost $30/100 = $0.30 + $0.10 = $0.40 each That's 4% on a $10 transaction. Looking at this I'm not sure I trust my math. Add in a 2.5% percentage and it is still only 6.5% - and that is for a $10 transaction.

If my figures are even close, I would say finding a true processor would be advantageous.

So the next question is, is there anyone here who can share an actual example from real life? Now you've SEEN the pain some fool like me endures trying to scope this all out. Anyone feeling merciful around here? Anyone here have a reseller account? I'd be more than happy to deal with someone I know here.

Andy