Who do you use to handle your online payments?

[open sesame]

Hi,

Who do you use to handle your online payments?

I have looked at PayPal Pro and Sage Pay.

Paypal: £20 monthly fee plus 3.4%+20p for each transaction
Sage Pay: £25 monthly fee

I was going to use Paypal and still might but that 3.4% is going to eat away at my margin.

Thanks

 

[WolfStores]

Why not go with PayPal Standard and save the monthly fee?

Also depending on the ecommerce platform that you are using Skrill (ex-Moneybookers) might be another good solution

Cheers,

Tim

 

[open sesame]

Hi Tim,

Thanks for the feedback.

I thought Paypal Pro was the only package which allowed a complete customisable checkout.

Affectively I don't want the user to know the payment is being processed by Paypal, so from when they add to basket to transaction complete page.

Are there other paypal services which allow for this?

Thanks very much.

 

[WolfStores]

Hi There,

If you need a fully customisable checkout then I guess you have to go with PayPal Pro.

Here is a link from PayPal comparing the two solutions if this is of any help

Cheers,

Tim

 

[abstractindigo]

SagePay and Streamline merchant a/c.

Join the FSB (Federation of Small Businesses) and you get discounted rates and no setup fee.

CardSave is also a good option, but for us the limitation is they can only process GBP, whereas SagePay can handle multi currency.

Euan

 

[abstractindigo]

Forgot to say.... FSB gets you no setup fee and discounts from Streamline.

CardSave is around £15 per month. You can use the Streamline account with CardSave as well as SagePay.

CardSave & SagePay are the "gateways"
Streamline is the merchant account (formerly NatWest Streamline, now part of WorldPay)

Just check what plugins or options there are for your chosen shopping cart / web site platform.

 

[allthebestuk]

SagePay and Streamline merchant a/c.

Join the FSB (Federation of Small Businesses) and you get discounted rates and no setup fee.

CardSave is also a good option, but for us the limitation is they can only process GBP, whereas SagePay can handle multi currency.

Euan

Agree we use this combination and are also members of the fsb - the best overall rates I could find were with these providers.

 

[MooToTheMax]

Stripe are currently in beta for the UK market, and BrainTree seem to be hungry for any and all EU business. If in doubt, get on the phone to them; from my experiences you can get some very good deals with very little negotiation (e.g. EUR 0.10 + 1.9%).

 

[AuroraDark]

Just a quick follow up to this if I may:

As a sole trader, is my only option to go with PayPal? All other payment gateways seem to ask for my business number (i.e. they assume I have a LTD registered with Companies House).

Many thanks in advance.

 

[amac]

Why not go with PayPal Standard and save the monthly fee?

Also depending on the ecommerce platform that you are using Skrill (ex-Moneybookers) might be another good solution

Cheers,

Tim

This is a great point Tim - I was guilty myself of this when starting out and I'm sure many others are i.e thinking too far ahead. You will save money and headaches by starting out minimising complexity.

 

[enous]

I use Paypal, didn't heard about the Sage Pay before

 

[LMDServicesUK]

Hi

What kind of turnover are you expecting to do ?

If it is less than £ 600 a month go with PayPal to start with and once your t/o increases to over £ 600 p.m. then look at a conventional payment gateway and merchant account. You will get far better rates, and it will be far more cost effective.

Only downside with PP is their customer service and high risk of having payment delays imposed on you at little or no notice..

FSB do good rates for their members but you do have to pay to join the FSB (annual fee depending on bus type) and then their gateway/merchant account provider partner (CardSave I think) will charge you to set up the service (you are not taking out an underlying lease to fund the set up..).

In our case our g/way fee starts at £ 10 per month plus merchant acquiring fees and we do charge a setup fee and the rates will be set as per your risk type, but there is no contract.

We accept Sole Traders as well - we assess you on your business plan / Risk not your business type !

If you want to PM me, I will happily put some figures together for you to compare to some of the other options mentioned on this thread ?

Rgds

Mark
LMD Services

 

[bartonz20let]

@lms, are you compatible with ekmpowershop? I've just started to pass the point where pp becomes a more expensive option am on the hunt for an alternative to take on my gateway requirements.

Also I'm looking for my (reasonable and legal) t&c's to be respected, something that pp won't do.

 

[CraigHays]

I use SagePay. While their fees are reasonable their platform stability is not as good as I would have hoped. I had to implement my own monitor for their system's uptime as I can't trust them to tell me when they have problems.

 

[LMDServicesUK]

You are not the first Merchant to make this observation, which is why a lot of Merchants are now moving away from Sagepay as well as to reduce their operating costs.

Again if you would like me to give you some indicative costings to move away to a different gateway provider / merchant account then please PM me.

rgds

Mark

 

[CharityClear]

PayPal basic can be a good starting point but very quickly it should work out more cost effective to have a payment gateway and merchant account set up. If you want any level of customer service then it's also a good idea to go with the payment gateway/merchant account route.

www.paymentbrain.co.uk is a useful and impartial comparison tool for payment gateway and merchant account providers. Your payment gateway provider should be able to help set up the merchant account, we look at the whole market regularly and promote whoever is offering the best rates for your type of business.

Marc.

 

[CardswitcherUK]

Try our website, UK's only price comparison site for card payments. We do agree that arranging your own merchant account and a gateway separately is by far the cheapest way to go, rather than taking the merchant account the gateway provider will organise (as a previous post mentioned).

Good luck
Stephen

 

[smo]

We use a batch processing package and streamline merchant account for telephone and mail order payments.

On our full e-commerce magento sites we use HSBC merchant account and their own Global Iris gateway.

For our small/dev sites we use Paypal standard.

 

[LMDServicesUK]

Hi Open Sesame

At the very least go to www.paymentbrain.co.uk and www.cardswitcher.co.uk so you can arm yourself with ALL the relevant facts before you choose your provider..

FSB rates are good, however you have to join the FSB to get them, so no set up is replaced by £ 109 plus VAT (from memory..) per annum, still FSB does some good stuff so may well make sense for you to join.

However we for example can provide a payment gateway from £ 10 a month plus acquiring charges (set by the Merchant account provider) and we do not ask you to enter into a contract, but we do charge a set up fee.

You also need to factor in how quickly you want a facility, some Organisations can have a decision for you in days others weeks, so just be sure to ask all the relevant questions.

If you would like some more help please PM me.

Rgds

Mark

 

[rsalemseo]

Paypal Standard for me. This has always been my number 1 payment processor!

 

[LMDServicesUK]

Why ?

PayPal Standard Pro compared to other providers is Very expensive to operate, poor to non existent Customer Service.. I can only presume you have never had a "problem" buyer so never had to deal with PayPal withholding your revenue with no notice for 30 days or more / refunding without explanation or even agreeing to listen to your side of a customer dispute, or just randomly changing the terms which they will allow you to work with them..

If all is good great, but they are way more expensive than just about any other Merchant account provider / gateway provider out there

There are choices o/s of PayPal for your merchant processing, assuming you are not operating an e-Bay shop as your primary business.

Even the PAYG providers start out lower than PayPal, and we know they are expensive.

If you think I am incorrect visit a comparison website like www.cardswitcher.co.uk and see for yourself.

Mark

 

[CharityClear]

Try our website, UK's only price comparison site for card payments. We do agree that arranging your own merchant account and a gateway separately is by far the cheapest way to go, rather than taking the merchant account the gateway provider will organise (as a previous post mentioned).

Good luck
Stephen

That's slightly misleading. Some payment gateway providers, like ourselves, don't have a partnership with one specific merchant account provider and instead monitor the market and promote whoever is likely to offer the best rates based on that merchants specific projections.

I understand what you're saying with regards to the merchant account is likely to have the most expense attached, but some merchant account providers will demand you only use a specific gateway, which may have limitations. It works both ways.

Advice to merchants is to do some homework, by using either the Cardswitcher or PaymentBrain comparison sites, but also speak directly to a couple of payment gateway providers and merchant account providers to give yourself the best chance of getting god rates and making sure you have all the functionality you need.

Marc.

 

[CardswitcherUK]

Marc-it's just my experience that gateway providers cannot or will not match the pricing that ISO's can set for Internet merchant accounts. This is demonstrated by any of the (well known) gateways who publicly state their merchant account pricing. But people use them for convenience or the mis-conception that there is some advantage in using a merchant account arranged by their gateway provider (or that there is no other option).

Irrespective of "the best rate" in the market on offer directly from a merchant account provider, this is rarely lower than can be achieved through an ISO, because ISO's are getting, and passing on, wholesale rates. Acquirers have a channel margin structure to maintain and at an individual SME level, pricing is reasonably rigid.

Regards