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What is the best credit card processing setup for startups?
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Re: What is the best credit card processing setup for startups?
#2I have been researching this for a while, and have been mostly confused. The obvious answers I have seen are authorize.net or paypal's services. But what is the ideal setup for a new company with not too much money in the bank?
Re: What is the best credit card processing setup for startups?
#3PayPal is good if you don't want the hassle of dealing with credit card numbers and the real meat of the credit card processing business because PayPal does it for you. All you have to worry about is giving a link to your customers to pay you via PayPal and you have the cash. The big disadvantage of PayPal is lack of control; they can hold your cash at anytime and big as they are it can be a while before you get it sorted out. Additionally you are very limited as far as how much you can customize the payment page. Now with the paypal api I think you have more control than when I used em.
Now lets talk about the real cc processing setup. It involves three parties: merchant, gateway, signing bank. Usually, when you signup with a merchant they will set you up with the bank they have a deal with so you can accept credit cards. The gateway is authorize.net. Authorize.net will be the interface between your customer's CC info and the bank that actually does the transaction.
Ideally for long-term you'd want to use a real merchant. But for starters, paypal should be a good option for you.
Re: What is the best credit card processing setup for startups?
#4Go with a merchant account if you're going to be doing any regular commerce/membership, but don't neglect paypal/google checkout as some people may prefer them.
Re: What is the best credit card processing setup for startups?
#5Paypal has a service called Website Payments Pro. I used it on a past venture and it was great. It was cheap to setup and maintain.
It is a transparent solution too, so you don't redirect users to the Paypal site unless they are paying by Paypal. Credit card payments are done from your site via a webservice.
Re: What is the best credit card processing setup for startups?
#6PayPal is good if you don't want the hassle of dealing with credit card numbers and the real meat of the credit card processing business because PayPal does it for you. All you have to worry about is giving a link to your customers to pay you via PayPal and you have the cash. The big disadvantage of PayPal is lack of control; they can hold your cash at anytime and big as they are it can be a while before you get it s…
PayPal accepts credit cards from a very limited number of countries. It is West-centric, in other words.
Re: What is the best credit card processing setup for startups?
#7Google checkout currently has a deal where all credit card processing is FREE for the rest of the year!
https://checkout.google.com/sell
Re: What is the best credit card processing setup for startups?
#8PaySimple is another good one for Startups. They have a great API, can handle recurring billing, stores the CC info and are good about letting you take the data with you if you wanted to go to another service. Wufoo is probably going to move over to them from Authorize.net (which is also a decent service that just implemented recurring billing).
Re: What is the best credit card processing setup for startups?
#9I'm using authorize.net at the recommendation of board member/successful business owner.
PayPal can be great as well because it is so easy.
Re: What is the best credit card processing setup for startups?
#10I've researched both paypal and authorize.net pretty thoroughly. For starters, I ended up with authorize.net. To first compare features though: Paypal offers what I believe they call the "paylink" feature. This is where the user is redirected to a paypal site (off of your own website) to make their purchase. The good thing about this for retail driven commerce is that it will interface well with a shopping cart system. I believe it either has no monthly charge or a very minimal one (also you won't need your own SSL). Above this, both companies have an API (or an application programming interface). To use Paypal's API you need to subscribe to their "payflow pro" program. This is about $40-50 mo. Authorize.net has API integration for about $30 I think. But then you need a merchant bank account which you can get through them for another $10. For those who aren't familiar, through an API you can set up a payment system that is built into your own site, which relays the data to the payment gateway. This is obviously the best option for serious merchants of any kind.
When accepting credit cards you'll also need a SSL (Secure Socket Layer) or in other words a secure connection (https://). I think they will actually allow you to use their api without that but it's definitely a horrible idea. There are a few major providers of this service, and they range in price significantly. www.InstantSSL.com or "Comodo" as they call themselves, has a pretty decent mid range SSL encryption package for about $100 a year. Godaddy.com has one that's like 19.99 or something ridiculous. The issue with SSL providers is simple. You can bet that they are all perfectly secure. The issue is really in browser recognition. The worst thing ever for an online merchant is to loose credibility, and what's the fastest way to appear disreputable - ""this site may not be secure, internet explorer recommends that you leave it immediately" or what ever that error says. This happens when a browser doesn't recognize the security certificate. To be safe, go with a provider that you can guarantee is trusted by all the major browsers (even old versions).
Also - one last piece of advice. When subscribing for a SSL certificate make SURE to turn your domain anonymity off temporairly while you subscribe. Otherwise they'll put you through an endless "verification" process that involves multiple faxes and endless bureaucracy!!!