Figuring out payment processing is driving me crazy: Please help!

Hello Sean,

Just a few random thoughts . . . you didn't mention this, but I would recommend a robust membership management system. List management with aweber is great, but you want to integrate this into a complete software program like amember.com. This would allow you to use any payment processor since a membership system could use cron jobs on the web server for recurring billing.

Also, the shopping cart has proven the most useful for me when the customer wants to select multiple items, or is trying to save duplicate shipping costs on different products. But you might only have a single product, so I wonder if a shopping cart implementation is overkill.

PayPal offers a merchant account with very good rates and your customers don't need to have an account with them. Customers can use any major credit cards to make a purchase. This service is called PayPal Pro

kind regards

Majority of people have paypal.

If the product is IM related, I can say that %95 of people have paypal.

What's the main niche?

You need to call authorize.net and ask them which of their merchant partners works with Canadian businesses.

Regardless, you need a merchant account before you can use authorize.net. Authorize.net is just the gateway between the merchant account and your store or sales page.

Your "cart or store" can be as simple as a sales page with a buy button that goes directly to authorize.net's payment interface.
In order to use them you will need to make sure you have SSL capabilities on your domain since everything needs to be secure.

You need to understand that some places are the merchant and the processor all in one - like 2checkout, paypal and paydotcom, clickbank, etc.
Thats why they charge the higher fees.

Your challenge is getting someone who will handle recurring fees for you automatically.
Those all come with some type of fees attached.

Start making a list to compare.

Sometimes a "simple system" - like you described is not the best if you are trying to handle recurring billing customers

Debbie,

just a small correction to your post:

paydotcom is NOT on that list, since they use paypal as the payment system.

Hi Sean,

I just got off the phone with the owner of the company a couple hours ago whom we are partnering with to provide Authorize.net enabled merchant accounts to all Canadians.

This is not a problem at all and I can extend this to anyone in Canada who needs an Authorize.net enabled merchant account.

I am about to fly out to the Canada Marketing Summit where I will be presenting about our ecommerce solution in Vancouver on Thursday.

However if you (or anyone else in Canada) PM's me with answers to the following questions I will personally email them to the owner of the company who will get you set up with a Canadian based merchant account enabled with an Authorize.net gateway:

Company Name:

DBA:

Contact Name:

Company Address:

Country:

Phone Number:

Fax:

Corporate Website:

Email Address:

Email Address:

Description of Product/Services:

Estimated Monthly Processing Volume:

Average Ticket:

Highest Ticket:

Have you ever processed credit cards before (if with paypal only answer "yes with paypal"):

Here is a lesson anyone who gets it can take to the bank in a major way:

--

In regards to your question about how a merchant account is cheaper...

Its just a matter of doing the math.

Take 100 $37 transactions a month for example.

100 x $37 x 5.5% + $35(transaction fees) = $285.50 a month using 2checkout

100 x $37 x 2.39% + $30 (transaction fees) + $30 (Gateway fee) = $148.30 a month using your own merchant account and an authorize.net gateway.

You just cut your cost in more than half that is a 51.9% savings.

Plus 2checkout should only be used as a last option because they are a reseller (third party processor) and you have no control over refunds and they can reject any product you want to sell for any reason they feel like.

The more volume you do the bigger the savings. You are basically keeping 2 1/4% more of your revenues.

Now add to that the ability to use killer ecommerce systems that do things like one click upsells...

I ran a test over the weekend on one click upsells... which you cannot do with clickbank, paypal, or 2checkout, and I increased my bottom line using nothing more than an unrelated resale rights product by at least 25%. In just 36 hours I generated approximately an extra $800 in sales on the back end for a $37 one click upsell alone!

And that was just a low dollar offer and test.

Anyone who jumps up and down swearing by Clickcrap and 2checkout just does not realize how much money they are leaving on the table.

I think the most important thing to ask your self is why Frank Kern, Amit Mehta, Russell Brunson, Mike Filsaime, Andy Jenkins, Brad Fallon, and everyone else you have seen doing launches lately uses their own merchant account and one click upsells?

The key is that they know that it is not necessarily how much you pay to implement a marketing strategy that matters but how much money it can make you ;-)

That is the power of having your own merchant account... and the reason why Authorize.net is important is because it is one of the best gateways there is and integrates with so many different ecommerce solutions.

Hi Kenneth,

We have two options for UK/EU as well as other International residents.

If you are serious and need an authorize.net account:

1. PM me a list of answers above that I listed for Sean and I will also submit your application. My partner has success 50% of the time in obtaining Authorize.net enabled merchant accounts for international applicants.

Yes, it is not as good as the 100% option for Canadian but there is a good chance we can get you one. As I mentioned 50% of the time we can.

For those in the EU who we cannot get an authorize.net enabled merchant account we can get you a Durango Merchant Services gateway enabled merchant account as an alternative. This is a good alternative because Durango has an authorize.net emulator. This means that any ecommerce solution that works with Authorize.net can easily be updated to work with Durango. We did this for our clients with our platform so that EU residents who do not qualify for an Authorize.net enabled merchant account can still use our Authorize.net features like one click upsells etc.

For other international people (50% of whom we can generally get Authorize.net accounts for) who do not qualify for the authorize.net account the last option is to incorporate in the EU at which time you would qualify for the durango gateway.

So in other words... if you are not in US or Canada... it does not hurt to try. I am willing to send in an app and my partner has agreed to do all he can to set international people up with Authorize.net enabled merchant accounts. However international applicants generally only qualify 50% of the time for this.

If you are serious and need my help just PM me the answers to the list of questions in my post above. However, do not do so unless you want to actually send in the application to be processed and have someone go through the trouble of finding an account for you.

Hi Josh,
I am interested in this as well and I am in Canada.
Questions:
- Can I registered fresh corporation in Canada to make this happen?
- Do i need to have corp bank accounts opened or just name and address would be enough? (I don't want to use my current corp accounts for this new project)
- What is DBA? What is Ticket?
- Estimated highest volume - this could go really high on the project I am launching - I want to have the highest volume available.

Please let me know.

Gleb

Superb infos right here, thanks a lot Josh, I'll be contacting you very soon.

Both InternetSecure and Merchant-Accounts.ca - U.S & Canadian Merchant Accounts offer merchant accounts AND gateway for Canadian businesses (no affil).
I have no experience with them - just have the info.

What if I use a shopping cart plugin? Will that be good?

Ronak.