Online Payment Solutions....

[geordiboyo]

Hi there,

After considering starting up an online store (at business plan stage), I was wondering if anyone out there can help me with choosing payment solutions?

I have heard of world pay, paypal and google checkout..

What payment solutions are available?

Who would you recommend?

Cheers

Mark

[fizzbird]

Hi there,

What payment solutions are available?
Who would you recommend?

It depends on a lot of factors but as an example I started a site selling full page ads last year and use google checkout for collecting the payments.
It was simple to set up and you get credits relative to your previous adwords spend so, in my case, it's unlikely to ever cost me anything.
You can opt to be paid daily, weekly or monthly.

It works for me but might not be ideal for everyone?

[kevforth]

Hi there,

at Childrens Rooms we use HSBC and old Romancart for the shopping cart, other than the fact that HSBC went down for around half a day early in Feb and had about 4 days down at this time last year it suits us absolutely fine. It is easy to use and we get paid the next day.

[BFG 9000]

Cybersource
SecPay
Protx
Authorize.net
HSBC
2checkout
netcash
netteller

To name but a few off the top of my head.

I've personally used
SecPay - very good support
Cybersource - again - very good support
Paypal simple - problematic & expensive
Paypal Pro - expensive
Paypal IPN - expensive
Google Checkout - cheap (free-ish) - but not as good for conversions as a 'real' card processing system.


To get the max conversions, you should offer customers a choice - some customers trust paypal for example (although I hate them).


Hope this helps.


TTFN

BFG

[geordiboyo]

Thanks very much, because none of you have mentioned worldpay. Would you avoid it?

Mark

[deadgoodundies]

Worldpay is Expensive.

I use protx myself and have done for years.

[crawfgood]

A friend who used worldpay, said it worked fine without any problems but in the long term i think he found them expensive. And the setup charge especially, if you are not certain of how well you are going to do the monthly charge and transaction charge was hefty.

Another friend is currenly using Protx and that works great for them and the costs are considerably less than worldpay with no setup fee (worldpay £200 setup) and up to 1000 transactions a month without a transaction fee (50p per transaction on worldpay) and then both have the % of transaction that they take. Worldpay £30 month plus the 50p transaction fee. Protx £20 month no transaction fee.

One difference is that with some (protx included) you also need a merchant account with a bank so you would neeed to take those charges into consideration also, but with Worldpay this is included so perhaps thats why they are a bit more expensive on the surface. All calculated over the number of transactions a month you expect to take you need to do the sums.

[crawfgood]

Forgot to say that Paypal payments can be taken also within the Protx interface so thats another payment option included for your customers.

[Stavros]

We use Protx and I personally can't fault them. We needed an "invisible"/integrated payment solution to process card details and return payment confirmation without the customer leaving our site, Protx VSP Direct does this perfectly but you will need a merchant account with your bank which usually has a £100-200 set up fee. It's worth it though, you pay a flat £20 + vat to Protx each month and your bank charges a typical 2-2.5% on transactions depending upon card type, the deal you have with your bank and whether or not you're a member of any trade organisations.

My impression of worldpay and the way I see it utilised most often is that it's used by online stores that either A) don't understand how to integrate a proper payment solution into their website or B) don't want the responsibility of accepting credit card details on their own site.
So, as a customer, I begin to ask myself if I'm dealing with a company that doesn't really fully understand what they're doing and would rather not take any responsibility for my payment... so why should I commit to buying from them if they can't trust themselves?

Having said that, I have bought from a few sites that use worldpay but it does taint my opinion of them. Also, I dunno if worldpay offer an integrated payment solution but I've never seen it.

*EDIT* my only gripe with protx is that they don't have a support number. Everything is conducted over email which is fine and works without a hitch but it's sometimes nice to deal with a human when you're setting up something as crucial as a payment solution which will be processing XX thousand of other peoples' money each month!

[BFG 9000]

.....your bank charges a typical 2-2.5% on transactions depending upon card type, the deal you have with your bank and whether or not you're a member of any trade organisations......

You should be able to negotiate this down considerably.


TTFN

BFG

[Stuart]

Protx any day and of course you could also offer Google checkout as an alternative

Stay clear of Worldpay (I won't post why on a public forum)

Barclays ePDQ is great if they still offer it, its been a while since I was a merchant

MSN me if you want nay more info, I have used a few in the past, some good and some bad

Br
Stuart

[TimL85]

i would also say Protx.

I've tried Worldpay and their fees are very high and if you are selling things like electronics online, the fees goes up!

[Stavros]

You should be able to negotiate this down considerably.


TTFN

BFG

heh, thanks. That was a stab in the dark, I don't recall what they are exactly but I know they're pretty low as we negotiated a good deal through the FSB

[deadgoodundies]

*EDIT* my only gripe with protx is that they don't have a support number. Everything is conducted over email which is fine and works without a hitch but it's sometimes nice to deal with a human when you're setting up something as crucial as a payment solution which will be processing XX thousand of other peoples' money each month!

Yup they do it's 0845 111 4455

Also don't forget when setting up a online store to have backup payment system just in case there is downtime on one.

Personally We have two ways to pay listed.

Primary is credit cards via protx
Secondary is paypal

I'd never use Paypal as my only way of taking payment but there are lots of people who use it (about of a 1/3 of our sales are paid via paypal) so it's always a good idea to have it as an option.

[Stavros]

Yup they do it's 0845 111 4455

I'd never use Paypal as my only way of taking payment but there are lots of people who use it (about of a 1/3 of our sales are paid via paypal) so it's always a good idea to have it as an option.

Cheers Adam... you learn something new every day.
Interesting stat you have on PayPal too, we've held off accepting it so far due to the fees which I thought were a bit on the high side.