Merchant Accounts

Use paypal and sign in at e junkie, clickbank is also good if you are an affiliate or publisher.

I like charge.com, they had me setup within 2 days and the whole process is really easy.

You can look into Authorize.Net. I hear they are pretty good.

Depending on what you need it for sometimes the gateway is as or more important than the merchant account itself.

For example an Athorize.net gateway enabled merchant account can provide you access to features and abilities in some ecommerce automation systems that Paypal and other options cannot like one click upsells, one click refund and void management etc.

Since you are in Canada there are not really many options for obtaining an Authorize.net enabled merchant account out there. I recently presented at the Canada Marketing Summit so I searched out and established a relationship with a Merchant account provider who can provide Authorize.net enabled merchant accounts to 100% of Canadian applicants.

Because of the demand for it among our own publisher base we set up a page for Canadians to subit application requests to this company which is called "Charge Today" that are specified as Canadian application requests:

Authorize.net Merchant Account Information

That is not an actual application but only a request to initiate the application process.

Personally I would never use a merchant account that was not compatible and enabled with an Authorize.net gateway.

Depends on what you are looking for. Paypal and Google checkout are fine if you have rare occasions of needing to take credit cards but I have recently found that they have an inconvenience factor that can be bad for business.

I have a physical business (Crime Scene Clean Up) and use Google check out but if someone wants to pay me with a credit card, they have to go online, register with google checkout and then make the payment. Pretty sure it's the same with Paypal. This was a chore for a recent client who finally went through the process but really didn't so I now have to tell them that I actually didn't get paid.

Long story short, I have also been looking at merchant accounts online for the past 2 days so that I don't lose business over this kind of thing. I'm looking for the cheapest monthly fees to be able to take credit cards without having my customers jump through hoops.

This website might help:

WhichMerchantAccount.com - Independent, unbiased product reports of the merchant account industry

You definitely would NOT want to use Paypal for this. You would want a merchant account.

You don't want paypal's policies or complaint system involved in that scale of transaction.

A merchant account actually provides you more protection against false chargeback and challenge claims.

Thanks for the link MarketPro...very helpful. I think I may actually go for the pay by phone deal. Expensive set up but only $5/month, no contracts, no minimums. I don't really have people buying my services for my main business on my website.

If it were for an IM site, i'd probably stick w/ paypal. for the most part, we all have paypal accounts already anyway....whether we like it or not.

Hi... Just a follow up.

I was under the impression that perhaps, at first you might send samples, and very small amounts that mostly wanted to cover shipping costs.

Josh Anderson's reply above is correct --if you are taking large orders a merchant account is the way to go. Of course, you'd also want to get a copy of the CC and ID for very large orders.

Sam

Thanks Josh, much appreciated!

Just found your other thread about Nanacast and am going to look into that as well.

Best regards,
Vince

good advice. the accept-by-phone.com actually fits my needs and they are an authorize.net service. Their transaction fees are 3%, no contract, no monthly minimum and monthly fees only $5.

I'd like to be able to enter transactions in online but that's more of a convenience factor for me than anything else. You can log in and view your account ledger anytime though.

Great discussion here. I am actually thinking twice of using paypal in my site. I heard paypal can be mean to their account holders when it comes to customers' claims.

Hey Guys,

I'm from Canada too (Alberta Woo Woo!) and was in a similar research boat back in December...I found a great merchant account provider with great fees and is actually a subsidary of TD Canada Trust:

Beanstream Electronic Payment Processing - Online Credit Card Processing, Online Debit Cards, and Direct Debits / Direct Payments.

Hope that helps!

PS - I almost went with PayPal too but I don't want them suspending my account for 6 months without my say, or issuing refunds just because they feel like it without giving me a fair chance to defend myself...food for thought!

I've used paypal in the past for occasional sells, and they're fine for that. But if you're doing any kind of volume you don't want to be invovled with some of their practices.

Hey Josh

Thanks again for the advice. I went and viewed the entire video library at Nanacast and have my programmer looking at it now as well.

I am very impressed to say the least :-)

Your service has almost everything I need all in one spot. The programmer should be able to take care of the rest with no trouble.

Best regards,
Vince