Monthly Fee, But Rather Charges A Higher Percentage Rate ?
Q: Can anyone recommend a instant credit card processing site that DOESN'T charge a monthly fee, but rather charges a higher percentage rate ? Also, it would need to be somewhere that either provides a merchant account or simply charges the user then takes their cut and dumps the cash in to my account. Any ideas ? So far it seems that paypal is the only option, but the user appears to have to have a paypal account to buy from you.
A: -There are some PayPal-like services listed at: http://paypalsucks.com/options.shtml And as Ian pointed out you don't necessarily need a PayPal account now to use a PayPal site, so that might be an option if you don't think PayPal sucks. I'm considering using Money Bookers (on the list above) for a site where most transactions would only be a few pounds. Anyone used them or anything similar and got any recommendations or warnings? I don't have a firm opinion on whether PayPal sucks, having never used it as a buyer or seller, but MoneyBookers seems to work out better for small transactions because it only charges a percentage, not a per-transaction fee. - It would be nice if that wasn't necessary but it's an anti-fraud measure and I think anything like this will have something vaguely similar. It doesn't mean they need to register first - if they did, they'd have to create a Moneybookers account, pay some money into that, then use their Moneybookers account details to pay on your site. As I can tell this is how it works with Moneybookers: if the buyer doesn't have an account, they can enter their mobile phone number at the same point as the credit card details. They get a text message with a code, which they must enter on the next screen to complete the order. So your customers would need an SMS-capable phone, although they could still register for a Moneybookers account if they don't - you have to look at you expected audience to see how much of a problem this is going to be. It does seem a reasonably good anti-fraud measure, providing traceability for each sale, although it doesn't cover the possibility of pay-as-you-go phones registered with false details. Even in that case it would provide a lead that could be used to investigate fraud. Moneybookers doesn't pass on chargebacks to the seller, and I expect the SMS thing is one reason for that (the other main one being that payments from Moneybookers accounts are non-reversible). More detail in the Moneybookers manual: http://www.moneybookers.com/merchant/en/moneybookers_gateway_manual.pdf How does it compare to paying through PayPal without an account? I found a forum thread discussing it including a screenshot of the form the buyer has to fill in: http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?t=152866&page=2 http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=7477 It doesn't look too bad to me, although there's a bit more information than is strictly necessary to process a card payment. Like Moneybookers you need to provide a phone