Internet merchant account - who else to get quote from?

[BrightIdeas]

I'll be using Sage Pay as my payment gateway and have obtained a quote from HSBC for their internet merchant account.

They've quoted £150 set up, 2.4% for credit cards, 30p for debit cards, and a minimum of £25 charge per month. Contract length is 24 months.

Is this good?

Before I ring around for quotes today, so would be interested to know what other businesses use (that can, hopefully, improve on the quote above!).

Thanks so much in advance :)

[Chris Ashdown]

If you join the Federation of small business then they offer good terms with streamline used to be free setup and cheap rates

[BrightIdeas]

If you join the Federation of small business then they offer good terms with streamline used to be free setup and cheap rates

Thanks Chris.

I thought these were just for merchant accounts for physical outlets? Is that incorrect?

[ICEY]

I use Secure Trading (http://www.securetrading.com)- I don't think they are the cheapest but their customer support is second to none.

[TotalWebSolutions]

As per Chris' comment, FSB can possibly get you discounts on Internet Merchant Accounts. However, they are by no means g'teed and the FSB would be looking for you to join for other reasons, i.e. not just for the IMA.

Have you committed to Sagepay yet, as we may be able to offer you better rates depending on the volume of transactions. PM me if you would like to discuss further.

Kind regards,

Simon

[Davef]

I'll be using Sage Pay as my payment gateway and have obtained a quote from HSBC for their internet merchant account.

They've quoted £150 set up, 2.4% for credit cards, 30p for debit cards, and a minimum of £25 charge per month. Contract length is 24 months.

Is this good?

Before I ring around for quotes today, so would be interested to know what other businesses use (that can, hopefully, improve on the quote above!).

Thanks so much in advance :)

We are members of the federation of small business (FSB). We don't have a bricks and mortar shop and most of our business comes from our websites.

FSB was worth joining for us just for the preferential rates we can get because of the agreement they have with Streamline.

Obviously it depends on your turnover and whether you are new to cards or not but visa & mastercard credit cards I think we are down to around 1.25% and 21p for Solo, Maestro and Delta.

[BrightIdeas]

I tried to ring FSB to find out more, but there lines were busy :-(

Definitely would be good to talk to them though, so I'll try again.

[Davef]

I tried to ring FSB to find out more, but there lines were busy :-(

Definitely would be good to talk to them though, so I'll try again.

Obviously very busy with people calling them to join :)

There are many other benefits including free banking with the co-operative bank, legal advice etc

Be prepared as they will most likely want to make an appointment for one of their reps to visit you!

[Christiane]

I'm also a member of the FSB and get preferential rates with Streamline. The latter don't charge a monthly fee, as you mentioned HSBC charge £25.

[paretowasright]

We are members of the federation of small business (FSB). We don't have a bricks and mortar shop and most of our business comes from our websites.

FSB was worth joining for us just for the preferential rates we can get because of the agreement they have with Streamline.

Obviously it depends on your turnover and whether you are new to cards or not but visa & mastercard credit cards I think we are down to around 1.25% and 21p for Solo, Maestro and Delta.

Wow those rates are very low you must be doing big volumes of transactions.

[Cloughie]

I went with streamline. I cannot remember my rates, but they were pretty competitive at the time and I have been pleased with them.

[Davef]

Wow those rates are very low you must be doing big volumes of transactions.

Not as much as we would like to :)

Even if you are new to cards the worst rate they were offering at the time we joined was 1.98% for MasterCard and 1.95% for Visa.

Once you have a trading history the rates will then tumble depending on your Average Transaction Value & Turnover.

[BrightIdeas]

Thanks all. I have decided to join FSB and go with the Streamline merchant account. Their rates seem pretty competitive and I'm told they are reviewed every 6 months, so can be reduced as transactions increase.

[davejenni]

Hello,

We are in the middle of building our web site and are going with Sage Pay and HSBC as well. We have a strong relationship with HSBC. After mulling over World Pay, we decided on Sage Pay because it is recommended by 2 other companies we are dealing with in these early stages.

I would be interested in what you finally decide.


Cheers,

Dave

[BrightIdeas]

Hello,

We are in the middle of building our web site and are going with Sage Pay and HSBC as well. We have a strong relationship with HSBC. After mulling over World Pay, we decided on Sage Pay because it is recommended by 2 other companies we are dealing with in these early stages.

I would be interested in what you finally decide.


Cheers,

Dave

We've decided to go for Sagepay and RBS merchant account (Streamline with FSB rates). Going through application at the moment. Even with the FSB membership cost, the rates were far more attractive. Are you a member of FSB?

Plus, lead time quoted was much shorter with RBS - they quoted 2 weeks from application to getting merchant number.

Hope that helps! When are you launching the site?

[BrightIdeas]

Oh yes, and the rates are regularly reviewed as mentioned in a previous post. Def recommend contacting FSB. Costs £150 to join - this covers the set up cost with HSBC alone.

[TotallySport]

there are other FSB benefits suchs as VAT inspection insurance which is included in the fee, our accountant charges £150+ for that a year, free legal advice, and they have access to a large number of businesses who give you discount. Plus if you bank with the Co-operative you get free business banking (there are restrictions depending on your size and use) but we don't pay anything for it.

[4little1s]

Thanks for the tip about the FSB, just checked it out and think I will join.

[Spapro]

I've recently joined the FSB to get their preferential streamline rates for our startup.

Very pleased so far with StreamLine merchant accounts and Sagepay - quick setup on merchant account from SL, easy integration into website from Sagepay with a nice brand name behind you and cheap rates via FSB membership.

From memory I am sure if you need/want a physical terminal to handle Mail Order/Telephone Order (MOTO) payments then with FSB rates its £14.95 a month rental instead of £19.95 with Streamline without FSB - and FSB members get first 3 months free !

We do everything with Sagepay so no physical terminal - £20 per month to Sagepay for online e-commerce and their 'virtual' terminal for MOTO payments.

Be aware that you do not get a customer receipt with MOTO payments made via the virtual terminal, not a big problem for us but if your customers expect/need a VISA receipt along with your invoice then maybe a physical terminal is better.

[davejenni]

Hello,

Just looked at the FSB website. Going with the recommendations from here, it looks like a good deal. Can somebody explain why Streamline is good? I need to change the mind of my M.D. from HSBC

Thx,

Dave

[TotallySport]

Streamline is a well recognised and respected and more importantly trusted merchant, it looks more professional than paypal and offers much greater choice, its stable and secure, and if you go through the FSB or are a good negociator then you can get some very low rates.

[agriya]

My company went with http://www.paypoint.net/ we went for the merchant account with bank enterprise which gives us complete control over the credit card transactions. Rates are reasonable, but probably not the lowest. They also have a virtual terminal to process credit cards manually as well. You also have the added benefit of being able to leverage the vast network of PayPoint outlets to let customers pay for your products and services offline in cash http://www.paypoint.net/paycash/

We've only been with them a few months so haven't built up enough experience to properly recommend them, but they seemed good when we did our research.

[EcommerceFreak]

They both seem reasonable. Here are a few more:
barclaycard, carsh-ticket, cqrpayments, elavon, netbanx, optimalpayments, pacnetcervices, creditcall.

Hope this helps. I personally find it easier to go with one supplier that can setup a whole ecommerce and you really don't have to do anything else. I went with tlgcommerce. They pretty much did everything for me, I just took photos and gave them the text for my products.

[Josh B]

If your an Actinic user then the best PSP has to be Actinic Payments. This system has tight integration no other PSP can offer.


Josh

[EcommerceFreak]

That's pretty cheap. I just had a look at the web for tlgcommerce but I don't think they use payment processors. They claim to use paypal, worldpay or offline. i suppose this means that theirs no intermediary and less commission charged to the customer.

[Josh B]

That's pretty cheap. I just had a look at the web for tlgcommerce but I don't think they use payment processors. They claim to use paypal, worldpay or offline. i suppose this means that theirs no intermediary and less commission charged to the customer.

With that system you still need a merchant account :( most will work.

With the before comment I agreed keeping everything under 1 roof is a lot easier just sometimes you pay a bit over the odds but i guess with the ease of 1stop support it can be worth the extra.

Josh

[limessl]

I am in need of a merchant account so I can take payments directly on my website. Problem is that I have no trading history and the business will be 100% online. The current test site uses Paypal but I find it embarrassing that I am forced to redirect customers to a third party site to pay their bills.

my web hosting is PCI DSS compliant, but I cannot seem to overcome the problems of no history. Has anyone else successfully found a merchant account under similar circumstances?

[Josh B]

I am in need of a merchant account so I can take payments directly on my website. Problem is that I have no trading history and the business will be 100% online. The current test site uses Paypal but I find it embarrassing that I am forced to redirect customers to a third party site to pay their bills.

my web hosting is PCI DSS compliant, but I cannot seem to overcome the problems of no history. Has anyone else successfully found a merchant account under similar circumstances?

Hi.

There usually isn't a problem in getting a merchant account, as the bank will just say we need a £10k deposit and you'll have to wait 6 weeks for money to get into your account... after about 6-12 months of trading you should get a merchant account at a reasonable setup fee.

Most sites use 3rd parties to process payments as it's the easiest and cheapest way. You say your site is fully PCI DSS compliant but is your office as well? The rules are extreme, entry logins on doors and cleaning staff accompanied unless they are on your payrole etc

I would always advise using a PSP whose sole purpose is to provide an efficent and secure payment gateway.

Josh

[limessl]

The answers are easy, there is no office. There are no staff.

Credit card details would not be stored anywhere anyhow, they'd be transmitted for one transaction and then purged.

The key for "looking professional" is for my customers to simply pay on my own site rather than someone else's.

[Josh B]

The answers are easy, there is no office. There are no staff.

Credit card details would not be stored anywhere anyhow, they'd be transmitted for one transaction and then purged.

The key for "looking professional" is for my customers to simply pay on my own site rather than someone else's.

I assume your going to use a dedicated SSL and either an offline or online terminal? If you use an SSL you must be downloading the card data to somewhere, or is there a system your using to get round this?

How much is your PCI DSS compliant hosting? I've heard it's a lot.

[limessl]

Site is on a dedicated SSL host - we're using EUKHost to provide the hosting, the cost of a VPS is £240 a year including VAT, plus we pay £20 a year for each individual IP address - although you get two of them for free on the account.

The VPS also gives us full admin control over the server, so it's way ahead of a shared host (which wouldn't be PCI DSS compliant anyhow).

It's by no means expensive! I am assured this solution will meet PCI requirements, although until I get a merchant account and test it out, I can't be 100% sure.

[Josh B]

Didn't realise, good to know. Hope you comply when it's all set-up.

[WhiskyFive]

I'll be using Sage Pay as my payment gateway and have obtained a quote from HSBC for their internet merchant account.

They've quoted £150 set up, 2.4% for credit cards, 30p for debit cards, and a minimum of £25 charge per month. Contract length is 24 months.

You can get preferential rates if you quote this deal:
http://artsandcrafts.actsmart.biz/services/commercial-benefits---reduce-costs/card-processing/

However, you won't get the best rates if you are Internet only.

To get round this, you can apply for an in-office card terminal account, and then add a second merchant account for Internet.....if the Internet is an add-on rather than the main account, they offer the better rates.

The downside is that you'll need two merchant accounts (an extra £20 per month) so is only worth doing if you have good volumes. Luckily we were using the office terminal for wholesale payments.

I would suggest checking out Iridium for the payment gateway.

[kitschagogo]

I think it's definitely worth bartering with them also! I've never done anything like this before, but am an avid comparison shopper.

I joined the Federatio of Small Businesses and paid my £150 membership fee - mainly because I needed two merchant accounts and this was a much cheaper way of getting them (they are £175 each otherwise)!

I have the streamline merchant account for my online store (when I can integrate it). This is basically pay as you go:

No set up fee.
No monthly fees.
Transaction fees: 1.95% Visa, 1.98% mastercard, debit cards 31.5p
No minimum spend (should be £15).

I then have the other merchant account linked to a GPRS card machine supplied by 123 Send.

£25 delivery (should be £50)
No set up fee.
£19.99 per month +VAT
All card types: 1.49%
Debit cards 21p
No min spend (should be £10)
Free Worldpay account setup
36 month contract.

These rates were matched to a competitor.

Tony

[TotallySport]

Why did you get a worldPay account for the terminal and not a streamline one, once you have a streanline account its much cheaper to get additional accounts (£75 i think) and you can still haggle to get this down, but you can then say your total income will be more over the two accounts and get better overall rates.

[kitschagogo]

Sorry - it is a streamline account for the terminal as well - Worldpay is the gateway (right?!)

It got a bit confusing over the phone as I set up my ecommerce account direct with streamline and then had to request my other merchant account with 123 Send (who basically just called streamline as they process their payments anyway).

[cjdglobalpayments]

Hi.

I'm new to the forum.

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