Accepting Credit/Debit Cards

[Fewski]

What would be the best program to accept Credit and Debit Cards so people don't have to sign up for a program.

For example: Someone gives me their credit card number to pay me, how would I go about charging it?

Thanks for any help.

 

[will7]

Either sign-up free with PayPal (www.paypal.com or www.paypal.co.uk) and then get a business/premier account (free) and you can accept credit card payments. I think PayPal take like 2.7% from the total for the sale.

Alternatively, go to WorldPay (www.worldpay.co.uk) and sign-up with them for credit card payments. They have multiple solutions and they do cost, but you'll get what you pay for.

Around February 2005 (when I hope to start my web hosting company), I'll be buying a solution from them so I'll update with info about their service.

So there are two of the main credit card payment processors on the net. Hope I helped!

 

[-SMH-]

Heres another recomendation http://www.freeauthnet.com/

 

[Chris]

What would be the best program to accept Credit and Debit Cards so people don't have to sign up for a program.

For example: Someone gives me their credit card number to pay me, how would I go about charging it?

Thanks for any help.

If you are wanting something where you can have a form and the customer will enter in their credit card information and then you will charge their card, then you will need a full merchant account to be able to do that. But then you'd also need a SSL Certificate so that the sensitive data is encrypted when someone submits the form with their credit card information. A certificate can range anywhere from $25 to about $150 a year, depending where you buy it.

There's an application fee with most merchant accounts, however there's companies who run promotions that drop the fees. It'd most likely be around $40-50 minimum per month for the merchant account, but it's based on the volume of sales you have as well. It all depends on how many sales you will have a month, as obviously 100 sales would cost more than 10.

If you don't want to spend all of that money, then a cheaper alternative would be a company such as 2checkout. It's only a one time fee of $49 and then a certain percentage off each transaction. You don't need a security certificate with this route as they offer you a secure checkout.

All the best to you! :tu: