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Eli
Posts: 2658
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Merchant Account - 10/23/2002 14:22:35
Can anyone tell me what I need to have in place to accept cc details?
a merchants account? (whats that?)
ssl? (whats the about?)
help!!!!
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tterrifc
Posts: 690
From: Riverside CA USA
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RE: Merchant Account - 10/23/2002 14:32:26
Micah,
I can' t tell you indepth, but we use Card Service International to accept credit cards. That' s the gateway that accepts and processes the cards. We use Verisign to accept cards via a secure server. You get an address located on a secure server. I' m always intimidated when I try to explain things in this forum. So many others communicate much better than I do.
Anyway, for our company' s site, we have a lot of sales and it is well worth the money.
For my own site, I use CCNow. Did have Card Service International, but you pay a monthly gateway fee, was $35., plus other charges, don' t remember, set-up was very expensive. Then you pay the bank a percentage of every credit card processed plus your monthly fee. With CCNow, they do it all and deduct 8% on each of my sales. It' s a small site with a medium amount of sales, so that' s lots cheaper for me.
Hope this helps. It helps me to write it out to see if I understand it all myself.
< Message edited by tterrifc -- 10/24/2002 2:37:59 PM >
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Reflect
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RE: Merchant Account - 10/23/2002 14:33:32
Hi,
I am getting ready to go back down the road again on this for another site of mine.
The last time I did this has been around two or three years. Hopefully it is better.
I had to get an on-line merchant account (a biz account basically), a real world merchant account and a CC gateway company. I went with authorize.net for the on-line merchant account and gateway services. Setup was around $300 usd. Monthly 20 usd. I went with my bank for the real world merchant account. I did make a call to my bank rep. and she stated that they have combined up with AN and it is now cheaper and easier to get rolling (phew). My real world merchant account gets a low percentage from each sale.
SSL is shared via my host Datapipe. This saved a few dollars a year and am happy with that. They are really on the ball with their security and how they implement the DB connections.
Brian
< Message edited by Reflect -- 10/23/2002 2:35:23 PM >
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Andy from Spain
Posts: 918
From: Ipswich
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RE: Merchant Account - 10/23/2002 16:25:48
Hi Micah
Being in the UK, take a look at Worldpay - www.worldpay.com - popular choice but differing reports on their pay out times, 2Checkout - www.2checkout.com will send money to British banks - they work quite well and their service has improved a lot recently - those will cut out the need for your own secure pages as the transactions take place on their servers.
Cheers
Andy
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Gil
Posts: 7533
From: North Carolina, USA
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RE: Merchant Account - 10/23/2002 16:30:38
Reflect & Tterrif have pretty much explained it. I will say I' ve used four or five different CC Gateways in the past and will NEVER use any other than Authorize.Net again. I' ve never had a problem and the setup/maint. is a no-brainer. Merchant accounts have come down, we offer one with now for a $25 setup, don' t pay much more than that. Secure Socket Layer (SSL) is handled by the gateway - you don' t have to be concerned about that.
< Message edited by Gil -- 10/23/2002 4:30:55 PM >
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Reflect
Posts: 4764
From: USA
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RE: Merchant Account - 10/24/2002 7:35:49
quote:
$25 setup
Cool, the setup, I thought before, was always way to high for the little person. This is good news.
Brian
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Bill Nicol
Posts: 1445
From: Springfield IL USA
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RE: Merchant Account - 10/24/2002 9:06:21
Okay, so where does Paypal fit in all of this??????
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Andy from Spain
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RE: Merchant Account - 10/24/2002 9:12:19
Paypal is like having a stash of cash on the internet. You provide funds to your paypal account and then you can pay out using your email address or receive funds via the same route. Very handy and only limited by the receiver or sender not having an account themselves (or having exhauted their stash of cash on e-bay)
Cheers
Andy
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Bill Nicol
Posts: 1445
From: Springfield IL USA
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RE: Merchant Account - 10/24/2002 10:22:32
Hi Andy,
Concept sounds clear, but this dense brain isn' t grasping how one puts the stash out there, retrieves the stash, or transfers the stash. Like someone from Missouri (the show-me state) I need an example.
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Eli
Posts: 2658
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RE: Merchant Account - 10/24/2002 12:19:22
so what if my client already has Offline Merchant Status (the ability to collect cc details via phone/fax etc.)
Can I do this?:
get some host space
get some ssl space
get a shopping cart
store order form gets sent to client via email
they process the cc details
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tterrifc
Posts: 690
From: Riverside CA USA
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RE: Merchant Account - 10/24/2002 13:43:08
That' s just it. You would still need a gateway.
Bank of America, where my busines account is, offered to accept online credit cards through them, but their setup fee was $700.-$800. Ridiculous...hence, Card Service International. There are five or more others. Wells Fargo has announced they can do the service. So, check prices.
I don' t think you want customers to send their credit card numbers through email. Not secure. Not sure if you meant this to happen. Just a precaution.
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Gil
Posts: 7533
From: North Carolina, USA
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RE: Merchant Account - 10/24/2002 14:01:21
quote:
Can I do this?:
1. get some host space
2. get some ssl space
3. get a shopping cart
4. store order form gets sent to client via email
5. they process the cc details
1. Yep
2. Why? The gateway will provide the SSL connection
3. Yep
4. NO! - Email is not secure, you and the client could be liable for any CC fraud!
5. See 4 above.
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Bill Nicol
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From: Springfield IL USA
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RE: Merchant Account - 10/24/2002 14:20:48
Hi Andy,
Thanks for the great explanation and my apologies for seeming so dense ....I went out to the Paypal site and found the answers there, too.... (like I should have done in the beginning)[:j].
I hope this isn' t an apples and oranges thing, but Paypal works using email. Gil says (and the rest of us know this) that email is NOT secure. Where is the line drawn? When do you go merchant account and when do you stay Paypal. Sales $ ??
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Andy from Spain
Posts: 918
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RE: Merchant Account - 10/24/2002 14:33:06
Hi Bill
Gil is perfectly correct, sending CC details by email is a big no-no but Paypal just uses your email address as an " identifier" , like a bank account number I guess - so when bill@whatever.com pays andy@whatever.com your stash gets less and mine gets greater - it' s just a number game and no credit card details or personal information is involved, paypal receives the information and then decreases/increases the corresponding accounts.
Cheers
Andy
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Bill Nicol
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RE: Merchant Account - 10/24/2002 15:04:58
Thanks Andy,
Wow, can' t believe I had so much trouble grasping that one.... [:j]
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Gil
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RE: Merchant Account - 10/24/2002 16:42:16
quote:
Is it such that even with our own SSL certificate the transactions won' t be safe because the cc numbers will be coming in to the client by email???
Bingo!
Without a payment processor you will have to use something like PGPMail to even " hope" for a secure transaction.
The " need to involve a third-party processor" is just that a NEED.
I had a client who felt they could do the processing through their existing merchant account also - after 4 months they realized they were spending more in time than the processor fees and exposing their selves to a lot of liability.
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Andy from Spain
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RE: Merchant Account - 10/24/2002 17:14:22
Hi Helene
The way it works is that the order is made on your site, the details of the order are forwarded to the credit card processor (2Checkout, authorize.net or whoever) site, where on their secure server, the client enters their CC details, they check that it' s valid and then you receive an email that a transaction has taken place and can ship the goods - well that' s basically how it works and why they charge a transaction fee and percentage of the sale for their services. So you don' t need anything more than that really.
Cheers
Andy
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c1sissy
Posts: 5077
Joined: 7/20/2002
From: NJ
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RE: Merchant Account - 10/24/2002 17:54:45
Hi guys, I' m glad that I browsed in here.
I can see that I still have much to learn.
Anyhow what brought me into this part of the forum is that I' m looking for information on how to charge shipping, as well as the above information that I' m going to have to read many times over.
What I want to do is sell things on line that I make. One of the things that has held me up other then a site, is how to work the shipping and handling. I have had many people give me different ideas on how to do this. What I have been looking for is a postal zone chart. I have searched on line but havent been able to find one.
I had one person tell me that you pick the furthest point and base your shipping price on this. Others say to email the people the cost of shipping and handling. The only problem with that is that if I have a 20.00 item and it costs about 8.00 to ship, wouldn' t that be a deterrent to the purchaser? To list the product as say $28.00 including shiping and handling, isn' t this a better way to do this?
I was also advised to use paypal. I was told that it is one of the better methods of recieving your payment.
I had hoped to have something going by this season, however it doesn' t look like this is going to happen. I still have much to learn with designing the site and in how to do the shipping of the products. Any help would be greatly appreciated in this matter.
I hope that I' m not posting too much off post, however I wasn' t sure exactly where to post this one. thanks.
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Gil
Posts: 7533
From: North Carolina, USA
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RE: Merchant Account - 10/24/2002 18:31:08
quote:
Helene;
but I don' t understand how that works.... because doesn' t the site need to be on a server that has SSL in order to function?
Nope - in fact you don' t want the shopping cart in a secure directory - the 128 bit encryption will slow it down to a crawl. The only thing that needs to be ' secure' is the part asking for the CC info.
quote:
If the gateway provides the SSL connection, how does that tie in with the rest of the SF site on my ISP' s server? Do I need both then -- an SSL certificate AND a third party processor?
Nope, see above.
As Andy says, you will get an email telling you the info and that the transaction has been approved. Also, you can specify which page on your site (a Thank you page) the shopper is returned to once the CC is approved (or declined).
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Eli
Posts: 2658
From: ... er ...
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RE: Merchant Account - 10/24/2002 19:18:46
the client is already running PGP - how good is this for cc details?
I don' t want to used Paypal because as a buyer I have to register with them, right?
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Gil
Posts: 7533
From: North Carolina, USA
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RE: Merchant Account - 10/24/2002 20:55:27
quote:
the client is already running PGP - how good is this for cc details?
Well, PGP is secure, but you still have the work (work = time = $) of manually processing the sales.
One of the advantages of being married to a cost account is I can ask " Which way is going to return the most profit" . She did this for me (and a client) about four years ago and with anything more than just a very few transactions, it' s more profitable to pay the processor.
For my business, I just don' t have the time to run all the transactions through, make out the deposit slips, drive to the bank, etc. Every day I get an email that says $xxx.xx was approved today and the next day I go online to my bank and sure enough it' s in my account. Gotta love technology 
quote:
I don' t want to used Paypal because as a buyer I have to register with them, right?
Yep. Plus while paypal is a great tool for buying and selling on Ebay, it' s just not a very professional image for an ecommerce web site.
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Gil Harvey, 1947-2004
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Eli
Posts: 2658
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RE: Merchant Account - 10/25/2002 4:42:49
so you think I can go down the manual order processing route (SSL, PGP) but it may be labour intensive for my client?
And you' re saying that an automated system (WorldPay) is easier to maintain but requires a monthly/% fee and the use of their SSL via their gateway?
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Thomas Brunt
Posts: 6106
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From: St. Matthews SC USA
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Authorizenet - 10/25/2002 12:20:43
I kept out of this for a while because I didn' t want to contradict anyone, but I have to speak about Authorizenet.
Apparently some of their customers are pleased with their service. I have not been pleased. I' m in the process of moving to CardService International.
On several occassions they have introduced system " upgrades" that shut me down for close to 24 hours each time. On each of these occassions, it was almost impossible to reach anyone there because, I can only guess, they had shut many other customers down as well. The odd thing about that was that when I did finally reach someone, I was told that I must have done something wrong. Of course, I had changed nothing. In each case, it took me several tries to prove to them that their system was not doing what it was supposed to do. That was not an open possibility in their minds.
On one occassion, I reported to them a con artist who was systematically hitting on Authorizenet clients. Their response was to lock down security so that nobody from outside the US could buy anything. When I told them what was wrong. They told me they were doing me a favor. Non US customers were much more likely to commit fraud!
They told me that they had not shut out all non US contries -- just the ones where fraud is a big problem. I then asked Spooky (New Zealand) and abbeyvet (Ireland) to try to make purchases. Both of them were locked out. I reported that to them. They said that was not possible! They litterally refused to do anything about it.
Apparently, other sites complained about this too because there was no way to get through to anyone over there for many hours after my call where they basically told me to live with it. The system was fixed the next day.
I have no problem with a system having some issues and sorting them out. My problem is with the consistent attitude that I must be at fault when I report an issue. If it just happend once with one support person, then I could pass it off as a fluke. It' s happened 3 times this year, however, and I have spoken with others who are at least as angry with them as I am.
My recent experience with Card Service International has been extremely positive, however. Their system can do more things -- like recurring billing. They' re reporting is better. It' s way easier to block a fraudulent cc. It' s way easier to look up an old transaction. The list goes on and on.
t
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Eli
Posts: 2658
From: ... er ...
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RE: Merchant Account - 10/25/2002 14:07:58
This is all GREAT information - probably the best I' ve seen at Outfront. Maybe someone should bring all the info together and wrtie an Outfront FAQ. Thomas?
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