How Do I Accept Payments For Lead Generation?

Most, if not all businesses are going to require an invoice, both for the accounting department, and for tax purposes.

When you say, you want to charge the cc automatically, do you mean the amount is the same each month so it is recurring?

As for the invoicing, if you use an accounting program such as Quick Books, you can integrate everything together, but the clients would still need to physically make the payment.

If you deal mostly with offline business people, many may not know about Paypal so it might be better to use another method. You can also set up different methods on the same invoice which might be more convenient.

If you are charging the same amount each month, PayPal has a subscribe feature.
Where they automatically pay the same amount, each month until they cancel the service.

I can only speak for business in Australia. The last business I had was a National Call Centre I started from scratch and sold 12 years later (sold just over a year ago). I dealt primarily with OFFLINE businesses, many being large corporates.

Firstly, they required some sort of invoice (tax, reconciling, etc.).
Secondly, (depending on the amounts you are charging) they may pay via EFT, Cheque or Credit Card (With CC, the downside being merchant fees for you).
Thirdly, I found the ideal way was EFT. However, I always took a 50% (approx.) advance deposit on what the expected billing would be for the month. Serious clients would have no problem with this.
Lastly, if credit card is the way most payments are made, some businesses may find an automated process challenging if the amount varies from month to month as they would want to reconcile no. of leads provided with invoice before payment.

I have an Authorize.net account - I can check to see if they offer auto payment via CC.

Hope this has helped...

Warm regards
Dean

I set up a paypal button and embed it into my invoice with the dollar amount of a single lead. Then, invoice the customer, break down the cost in the total line then they can either cut me a check and mail (or I'll pick it up) or click on the paypal button and enter the quantity of leads they have.

Here's the invoice I use... Please don't spread it around as it's part of a course I sell, but it'll give you an idea as to what I'm talking about.

http://james-stickel.com/InvoiceSample.pdf

When they click the paypal button, it goes to a paypal invoice that allows you to adjust the quantity. Then, the customer just enters how many leads they got and clicks update, then pays.