payment processing

[rufman]

new to the site, hope it is full of legit small biz/e-commerce owners looking for trade/biz secrets.
been doing biz for over 10 years online. use paypal and also cc for processing of payments. everytime i sit down and look at all the stupid fees and extra charges from my processing company i feel like i am getting screwed!

anyone in the same boat? who do you all use and why?

[vangogh]

Welcome to the forum rufman. If I'm understanding right, then I'm not too crazy about the company I go through to get to the company that actually processes the payment. I assume you're not talking about the transaction fees, but the extra monthly fees the company that connects you to a processor charges. I'm moving away from them because of the fees. In fairness to them, I think they mean to handle businesses that are larger than mine. With more money flowing through the fees wouldn't seem as large as they do now.

I've always used PayPal as one way people could pay me. Many people ask for it and it's simple to use. They take a transaction fee, but I don't have problem, since they perform a service I need. I also use Stripe (https://stripe.com/). It's the processor without the company you have to go through to get to the processor. Also easy to use. I initially set it up through an add on to a WordPress shopping cart plugin. I also manage clients directly in Stripe. It's allowing me to cancel the old set up with the extra fees.

[Brian Altenhofel]

A good rule of thumb is that if a payment processor is advertising their rates, they are probably high compared to the rates that retailers doing a reasonable amount of sales volume can get.

While I don't recommend Authorize.net to my clients (simply due to better rates available elsewhere for their type of volume), I do recommend that they use a provider who has an Authorize.net emulator. Authorize.net is so widely used online that any respectable e-commerce system will support it, and an emulator allows the client to easily change providers as needed without incurring several thousand dollars in extra web development costs.

[Harold Mansfield]

I use Pay Pal religiously and have for years for various projects. I have no problem with the fees since ( as VG said) they are providing a very easy to use service that my clients find credible and secure. No one has ever seen that Pay Pal logo and questioned what they are putting their credit card information into.

Additionally, they have a lot of tools for no additional charge such as taking mobile payments (take a CC right at a meeting) , invoicing, recurring billing, checkout buttons, mobile checkout, and it integrates into pretty much any 3rd party software that I'm using.

There have even been times when I've been away from my desk and was able to invoice someone from my phone. To me that's pretty convenient.

So unfortunately, I'm not one of those that feel I'm getting screwed. When I think of the time it saves me, and the money I'm not paying for those additional services and tools for me it's worth it. Besides, it's not like I'm eating the cost. I know going into every transaction that it costs 2.9%, so it's not really a big deal to me.

They've also had my back when I really needed them.

If I were billing for higher amounts, I may look at a different solution including wire transfer.