Accepting Credit Cards on Your Website by Christopher Heng, thesitewizard.com Are you thinking of selling things on the web? If so, you will probably also be considering some way in which you can accept credit cards on your site. Since new webmasters who visit thesitewizard.com often ask me about how they can get started accepting payments in this form, this article provides some basic information on adding credit card payment facilities to your website. Why Do It? Credit card payments allow you to take advantage of the following types of customers: 1. Impulse buyers. After reading your advertisements and hype on your site, buyers would be all fired up about your product. If they have a means of making a purchase immediately, you've secured that sale. If you only allow cheque payments, the additional time it takes for them to get their cheque book and mail out the cheque may be a deterrence. They may also have second thoughts later. 2. International customers. Credit card payment is a tremendous convenience if your customers are overseas. It automatically takes care of the problems of currency differences as well as the time it takes for a cheque to travel to the vendor. You will lose a large number of overseas customers if cheque payment is the only way you can accept payment. Methods of Accepting Credit Card Payments There are actually two ways in which you can accept credit cards on your site. 1. Using Your Own Merchant Account. To do this, you will need a bank that will allow you to open a merchant account. Requirements for this will vary from country to country, and you should check with your local banks for more information on this. 2. Through a Third Party Merchant. There are numerous companies around will are willing to accept credit cards payments on your behalf in exchange for various fees and percentages. Which Method Should You Use? The initial costs of opening your own merchant account is usually higher than when you use a third party merchant. Indeed, some third party merchants have no setup fee at all. However, the transaction fee (which is what you pay the bank or third party merchant for each sale) is much higher when you use a third party as compared to when using your own merchant account. A third party merchant is usually convenient to use when you don't know if you can actually make much out of your product or service. If you just want to test the water to see how things are, this is usually a good way to start. It is also convenient in that the merchant takes care of everything for you. You just get a cheque at the end of each payment period (if you earned enough) and concentrate on your products, services and customers. Having your own merchant account accords your business with a certain amount of professionalism. And, as mentioned earlier, your transaction costs are usually much lower. However you have to be careful to minimize your credit card risks since you'll be processing the credit card payments yourself. This is not to say that there are no risks attendant in using a third party merchant. Some Third Party Merchants Here's a list of some third party merchants that you might want to consider if you're looking for ways to accept credit card payments. I have not tried any of them myself (as a vendor) so I cannot vouch for any of them. Check them out carefully and use them at your own risk. Note that rates and stuff that I publish below were correct at the time I investigated these vendors. It may have changed by the time you read this since I investigated them quite a while back. The list is arranged alphabetically. CCBill: There are no setup fees. Transaction fees vary (I can't find the schedule though) depending on the volume of sales in each accounting period. According to their website, "these fees are never more than 13.5% of revenues charged during this one-week period for CWIE hosting clients and 14.5% for non-hosting clients". CCNow: This is only for people who ship tangible, physical products. There is no setup fee, and they charge 9% per transaction except in the November and December where the fees are 8% per transaction (yes, lower). Clickbank: There is a one time setup fee (US$49.95) and a transaction fee of US$1 plus 7.5% of sale price. There are no other monthly fees. This is only for people who sell services or deliver products over the internet (not for those who need to ship physical products). Digibuy: This service is intended for software authors only. They charge 13.9% per transaction. I'm not sure if there are any other charges. IBill: This is a very expensive merchant. They charge 15% of each transaction or lesser if you sell US$10,000 or above. It is a big and (I think) reputable company, so if you are willing to part with such a huge margin of your earnings, you might also want to check them out. Kagi: There are no setup or monthly fees with this merchant. Kagi "charges 6.5% up to a maximum of [US]$3.00... plus 3.5% plus [US]$0.50 for processing costs". PayPal: If you are a Premier or Business account user, you get charged US$0.25 for transactions of US$15 and below, 1.9% plus US$0.25 for transactions above US$15 when your customers pay by credit card. ProPay: A new competitor to PayPal (see elsewhere on this page) that currently only caters to US residents. You have to pay a $35 fee to sign up, but there are no monthly charges. RegNow: Designed for software authors to sell their ware, this merchant deducts 20% of your sale price with a minimum of US$2.00 for their commission. There are also other charges for sales generated by your affiliates, etc. Share-It: This service is for shareware authors. They charge US$2.95 plus 4% per order, and US$1.95 plus 4% for the 1000th order of the month and above. There are also charges for mailing you your cheque in some instances. Verza: There are no setup or monthly charges. Transaction charges range from 4.9% to 6.9% of your sale price plus US $0.99. V-Share: This service is only for people selling shareware. There is a range of charges depending on the number of transactions and your sale price. I'm not sure I understand their charge schedule completely, so I'm not going to list it here. Check it out yourself if you are a shareware author. Trying It Out Whichever you choose, if you are selling things on the Internet, you really have not much choice but to accept credit cards. You probably don't know what you missed until you try it out. All the best in your business! Copyright 2000-2001 by Christopher Heng. All rights reserved. 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