In the next few months, I'm going to launch a site with micropayments for particular bits of content. I'm currently researching different options and defaulting to FPS for obvious reasons, I wonder how this new service compares?
Need to process payments?
91–100 of 100 posts
Re: Need to process payments?
#92Where can I invest in this company?
Re: Need to process payments?
#93What I have a hard time finding is a service that offers low fees for small purchases, or micropayments.
I sell a small software application that goes for $7. After trying a few places I've settled on PayPal micropayments which charges 5c + 5%, which comes out to about 7.5% for me.
I'd be interested in anyone that could give good micropayment rates.
Re: Need to process payments?
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
How so?
In some states in the US, it's illegal to ask for id for a credit card purchase. In all states, the credit card companies don't like it. Here's a good set of google answers about the issue: http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=71792 This is all to say, credit card processing is incredibly complicated. Here's another quote, directly from the federal government [1]: "MasterCard wants to hear about merchants…
Aren't Visa & MasterCard owned by the same company? I thought that's why they always dump on Discover in the advertisements.
Re: Need to process payments?
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
I do consulting work for a friend who has a surprisingly common problem: He needs to do card processing but only certain times out of the year. He goes to conventions and sells merchandise, etc and wants to be able to take credit cards but the monthly & inactivity fees would wipe him out. So far all I've seen that could fix this potentially is Square, but they have yet to ship out their swiping widgets to use to try…
Is it possible to be a "UHaul" of card processing? What are the limits for one company processing cards for another?
Pretty strict, normally all merchant account agreements mention that you can't process cards for anyone else or any other business/purpose/website other than the one listed. They like to keep a tight eye on that.
Re: Need to process payments?
#96Re: Need to process payments?
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
I do consulting work for a friend who has a surprisingly common problem: He needs to do card processing but only certain times out of the year. He goes to conventions and sells merchandise, etc and wants to be able to take credit cards but the monthly & inactivity fees would wipe him out. So far all I've seen that could fix this potentially is Square, but they have yet to ship out their swiping widgets to use to try…
Have they shipped any of the swiping widgets yet? I signed up about a month ago and still haven't heard anything.
Still waiting for mine. I setup my account on the day the app appeared in the app store.
Re: Need to process payments?
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
I do consulting work for a friend who has a surprisingly common problem: He needs to do card processing but only certain times out of the year. He goes to conventions and sells merchandise, etc and wants to be able to take credit cards but the monthly & inactivity fees would wipe him out. So far all I've seen that could fix this potentially is Square, but they have yet to ship out their swiping widgets to use to try…
Square sounds perfect for that. They are shipping out card swipers already, too. I would request another one if you haven't gotten yours yet.
Their site says for status:
"Your reader will ship soon"
Re: Need to process payments?
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is it possible to be a "UHaul" of card processing? What are the limits for one company processing cards for another?
Pretty strict, normally all merchant account agreements mention that you can't process cards for anyone else or any other business/purpose/website other than the one listed. They like to keep a tight eye on that.
You can of course deal directly with credit card companies like Visa and Mastercard - they have well documented APIs for interfacing with them directly.
Back in the late 90s, RedHat bought a small company in Pittsburgh which made a rather awesome product called CCVS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CCVS) which allowed you to talk directly to the credit card companies, circumventing the merchant accounts.
My employer started using CCVS to provide direct credit card services at the time, and I wrote a PHP module which shipped for a few years as part of PHP core for using it.
Sadly, RedHat discontinued the product ; I'm not sure if anyone else has stepped up to do something similar but it was incredibly easy to use, powerful and got around the absurd restrictions most merchant accounts provide.
I'm assuming Square is talking directly to the CC clearing houses, which is how they keep their costs reasonable.
Re: Need to process payments?
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks! What kind of weird things are you doing that don't fit with the recurring model?
Its just that much of our billing system was done before we ended up switching to chargify, so some of integration pieces are kind of weird(probably not how we initially would have designed them) and we are looking at doing some things with quantity based pricing, where we do something similar to linode and charge you a prorated amount up front for a item then charge you the full amount during the next period. As wel…
Thanks!