Payment processing

[steve o]

Hi everyone,

I'm just about to launch a website that will sell a high volume of product at around 59p - 69p.

Any ideas who are the best people to use as payment processors? Plus what sort of costs are involved per transaction?

I will endeavor to sell more than one item per transaction to bring costs per transaction/item down.

Any ideas?

[awebapart.com]

At products costing 59-69p typical payment processors can become inappropriate due to their minimum transaction rates, for instance PayPal's minumum transaction rate is 20p. This means you really have to enter into the territory of micropayments (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micropayment) - methods more suited for low priced transactions. One method which allows you to continue using standard payment processors is credits/tokens, e.g. customers buy £5.00 worth of credit/tokens using a standard payment processor, which they can then use to purchase goods using your site's built-in credit payment system. This method could cause issues since it is not a standard feature of most ecommerce systems. Another more simple method is to encourage/force a minimum transaction amount, say £5 (or lower), which can be set up in some ecommerce systems if an ecommerce system has a low order fee feature or advanced shipping calculators, e.g. table based shipping rates.

[AdvantageDigitalMedia]

I think awebapart has hit the nail on the head, transacting single payments of that low a value is not practical. The best way is to set up a online account for your customer where they deposit a sum that they then use to purchase the items. Hope this helps?

Regards

Darren

[scaifea]

Depends who your market is, if it's the eBayer type of market then just use Paypal.
Moving up a level Protx offer a good value full processing service for just £20 per month with no additional transaction fees to eat away at your margins. IF you expect more than 1000 transactions per month then consider their corporate service which is just a 10p per transaction charge.

[scaifea]

If you want more personalised advice, drop me a PM with details of your site and I'll look into it for you. I have set up eCommerce systems for some of the UK's biggest retailers.

[IridiumCorp]

Steve,

You will definitely need a micro payment supplier or even an e-wallet type service. If you try and authorise a Tx for under 1 unit of currency, ie 1 GBP certain issuing banks will fail the Tx simply based on value. Its called floor limit.

I would suggest that you have an account limit of 5 GBP.

I suggest www.mppglobal.com

Ask for Paul Johnson

[steve o]

Many thanks to all.

It looks as if Micropayments will do the trick.