What are your experiences with payment gateways

Hi Toni,

Not surprisingly Paypal tends to win in all areas of sales due to the customers "Peace of Mind". In that it is very easy for them to file a complaint if they don't like what they get.

This psychological perception is not there with the others you have mentioned and even if you have a full merchant account and process your own credit cards (as we do with a lot of our ecommerce sites) we find most people still go with Paypal for digital goods.

However, when dealing with physical goods that changes dramatically. IF you do not have some "Professional" solutions with full on-site credit card processing, SSL and an easy to navigate checkout process, you will lose sales.

Even with that being said, you will find a lot of people would still like to see Paypal as an option even if you do process your own payments.

All the best

Sean

Unfortunately I do not have the option of receiving payments via Paypal since they don't support my country. But i'm thinking of integrating several payment gateways so i can give costumers the option of choosing. Hm... perhaps i might even create a case study out of this...

thanks for the info, i went to see their website but i couldn't find any useful info so...

One other thing you could consider is 2checkout or Clickbank so that you can accept Paypal. As these payment providers accept credit cards and Paypal as an optional payment method for them.

That way you can specify on your webpage that you accept Paypal and all major credit cards and break through that trust barrier.

Just a thought and don't know if you will face similar restrictions using those 2 methods.

All the best

Sean

Thank you for your contribution Sean. I have looked at 2CO site and i must say, while they look a bit expensive they might prove to be a good solution.

I will check with them if they allow my country to operate fully with the funds.

As for clickbank, well... i own a membership site... and as much as i'd love to use clickbank, my site has a really small monthly fee so i don't think there is any use for clickbank except perhaps for a future use and perhaps as a payment gateway.... but I have no idea.. i'll have to check with them more on their policy

I personally tend to avoid sites that don't have Paypal as a payment option. I use Paypal mostly for my online activities, so using my CC for online transactions muddles up my bookkeeping.

The only other payment site I've ever been a member of was Moneybookers, and I think I've used them just once in the past 2 years.

I like Paypal because its the only Online Banking Processor thats Ebay Friendly and with that said i am pretty secured.

Moneybookers is also eBay friendly. This is quite recent but now you can use moneybookers on eBay.

I've started to sell using PayPal account, because everybody told that it's the most popular. But now I can say from my own experience that it's really true. Besides my friend tried to start his online business using another payment gateway. After he added the option to pay via PayPal his sales increased quickly. Moneybookers is alternative.

I am currently waiting to get approved by moneybookers for my site before I unblock the robots.txt file so i can get indexed.

I'm also considering working with 2CO

P.S. Does anyone know if i need an SSL certificate to use 2CO or Clickbank?