I've recently been considering using a merchant account and payment gateway rather than paypal (which is what i've been using for the past yr) and am a bit confused by all the options that I'm faced with.
First of all - is there a difference between a third party processor and a payment gateway? Are paypal and Authorize.net both third party payment processors?
Secondly - I understand that i'd need to open an online merchant account. Is it possible to have a company do my payment processing and NOT have a bank account with them? I noticed that some companies offering payment processing do have merchant account links on their webpages and some do not. For instance, Authorize.net doesn't have a merchant account link but first atlantic commerce does. Does this mean that first atlantic commerce offers merchant accounts in addition to payment processing and authorize.net doesn't?? Or will first atlantic help me open a merchant account at some bank?
As you can probably tell I'm quite confused at the moment and am confusing myself more with all the reading and research/reading i'm doing.
Any help clarifying my spinning head will be much appreciated!!
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Greg K posted this at 17:37—22nd May 2007.
He has: 1,601 posts
Joined: Nov 2003
Not sure about everything, but the company i used to work for used authorize.net, and i think that deposted directly into a standard company checking account that was set up at a local bank.
One thing to watch for, depending on what you sell, any "holds" on fund. I know that until we put certain criteria on the web site (real actual physical address, verifiable phone number, etc) Authorize.net was going to hold the funds for a period (I'm thinking it was 2 weeks, not sure though). They do all this for fraud protection for the customers.
I didn't actually set up the accounts, just going off what I remember the setup as. With authorize.net we had both a virtual terminal (where we could go to a web site and enter payment info) and also used their gateway for processing the payments (basically the gateway is just a secure webpage that accepts form data in the format it wants and returns result codes to let you know if it passed/failed and/or reason for failures.
I don't know what all pain it was (if any) to get started, but once the account was set up using it and connceting with it from PHP was pretty easy.
-Greg
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Michele78 posted this at 22:58—22nd May 2007.
They have: 19 posts
Joined: May 2007
I use cardservices, I have my own terminal, I pay a monthly fee and they take 5.00 of each transaction. I don't have a bank account with them I just have everything sent to my business bank account.
They are a 3rd party processor, they offer think 3 different plans to choose from.
Hope I did not confuse you even more.
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Solommon posted this at 12:25—23rd May 2007.
They have: 76 posts
Joined: Feb 2007
Ho much are services from authorize.net? Sounds realy interesting, but I have neve heard about such things before.
Greg K posted this at 19:42—23rd May 2007.
He has: 1,601 posts
Joined: Nov 2003
I'm not sure how much monthly fees are, (didn't set that up), but I did find still on the server a calculator I made for them to calculate how much they brought in from each subscription after Authorize.net transaction fee (what they take out of each transaction)
AMEX: 2.950%
Visa/MC: 2.190%
Discover: 2.190%
This calculator was written about 2 years ago, so the rates may have gone up.
-Greg
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konanmotihar posted this at 09:53—30th May 2007.
They have: 5 posts
Joined: May 2007
Thanks for your comments everyone. You've actually been quite helpful. I've decided that a 3rd party processor isn't for me, I'm going to go the merchant account and payment gateway route that has been suggested. I've done some research on the net and in other forums and while Authorize does appear to be the market leader I have read some negative things about them particularly with regards to customer service not being quite as personal as it could. I suppose that's to be expected of a very large company but it's not what I want for myself. I've decided to go with a smaller company and am currently considering First Atlantic Commerce...does anyone know anything about them?
They appear to have relationships with banks all over the world which is quite appealing to me as I imagine this will make opening a merchant account a little easier and also allow for smoother transactions. That is, if I've understood everything correctly! Would really appreciate some feedback on this partner bank business, here's the link where I read about it
http://www.firstatlanticcommerce.com/merchants/international_merchant_accounts.aspx
Thanks again for all the input everyone...been very helpful!
konanmotihar posted this at 13:03—29th June 2007.
They have: 5 posts
Joined: May 2007
I finally figured this whole thing out and made some decisions! I decided to go with First Atlantic Commerce and I have to say I'm glad I did. Since they're not a massive company I don't feel like a small fish in a big pond..quite the opposite in fact! They also have some interesting bespoke services (Virtual Corporation, etc.) that help get around some of the red tape involved. I would definitely recommend them!
http://www.firstatlanticcommerce.com/merchants/international_merchant_accounts.aspx
nytrokiss posted this at 20:04—29th June 2007.
They have: 10 posts
Joined: Jun 2007
How easy was it to set-up the gateway? What are the CC fee's? How is there support?
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konanmotihar posted this at 14:19—17th July 2007.
They have: 5 posts
Joined: May 2007
What was nice about this company is that (I assume this has something to do with the fact that their not a huge corporation) they actually provide phone numbers of the concerned people. This made it a lot easier for me to understand what they could offer.
konanmotihar posted this at 14:21—17th July 2007.
They have: 5 posts
Joined: May 2007
Sorry, I just realised that I provided a link to the merchant accounts page which isn't entirely relevant to the discussion. Here's the link to their Payment Gateway page - http://www.firstatlanticcommerce.com/merchants/payment_gateway.aspx
Sorry again if I confused anyone.
kristimullins posted this at 08:08—7th September 2007.
They have: 11 posts
Joined: May 2007
That's a nice way to advertise your payment gateway.
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christina posted this at 03:28—16th October 2007.
They have: 18 posts
Joined: Nov 2005
There are few good option there like 2checkout, worldpay, moneybookers, chronopay, multicards, protx, barclay, googlecheckout ( UK/US) that you may wish to check with their prices however all are reputed one.
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