OpenCart Payment Gateway?

Major_Disaster · 30 Jan 2012 at 02:48

Hey all,

Im in the very early stages of a new e-commerce site, using OpenCart. Im going through what needs to be done in my head and assume i need some sort of payment gateway to accept credit / debit cards.

Does anyone have any recommendations? This website is a bit of a punt so ideally i want it as cheap as possible incase the site folds. Is there anything else i need to consider?

Cheers

PhillyDee · 30 Jan 2012 at 02:55

Plenty of payment options out there.
I have beenusing PayPal, but to be honest, their fees are high! Any other merchant is going to require a years contract at the very minimum.

I have just signed up with http://www.cardsave.net/. Monthly fees are £20 and the setup fee for online accounts is £99, and the rates are much better than the merchant rates I am getting with paypal. They use worldpay and it includes a merchant account, tax insurance and a virtual terminal.

Contact them and they will send a rep round to discuss it for freewith no obligation. Im just waiting on activation.

Major_Disaster · 31 Jan 2012 at 18:43

Thanks for the reply.

I had a look at card save, but i couldnt actually find any example fees? Can you give any numbers?

Also, am i right in thinking to accept card payments you need a payment gateway and merchant bank account? How do the fees usually work? £x setup, £y / month and z% per transaction includes everything? Its not like x% to process the payment and y% to deposit it in your merchant account and then £z fee to withdraw the funds? Sorry - im new to this!

Any other reccomendations?

PhillyDee · 1 Feb 2012 at 08:02

The £20 per month for cardsave includes a merchant account. They apprently have around 55% market share (They are owned by streamline now). Its all payment +3 days to my account.

IIRC, debit cards are 30p per transaction fixed fee.
Credit cards are something like 15p and 2% per transaction. Something like that, all the documents are at my unit at the moment so cannot confirm, but its roughly right. Mine is online only, and includes a virtual terminal so I can take payment over the phone if required. The rep would be able to answer you better, they offer a free consultation.

The fees all depend on turnover and projected spend with the provider.

Major_Disaster · 1 Feb 2012 at 20:24

Hey PhillyDee

Ive been shopping around (looked at: CardSave, Nochex, MoneyBookers, WorldPay, PayPoint, SagePay and PayPal) and im starting to think CardSave may be the best so thanks for the recommendation.

One query though, i was initially sold by SagePay as they * appeared* to offer a fixed £20/month fee for up to 1000 transactions / quarter. But then i think they also appear to charge for use of the IMA. Am i right or misreading the info?

What is the IMA for?

Cheers

PhillyDee · 1 Feb 2012 at 21:05

If you go with sagepay, you will also need a merchant account, another £20 per month. Plus, they also charge you for PCI compliance.

There are 2 stages, the gateway is the service that accepts the card details, and verifies they are correct, checks that the balance is good and that the card is valid etc. It they charges the card with the value and trasnfers it to a merchant account. After this it is then transferred into your bank account.
The merchant account is essential.
Nochex and paypal have integrated merchant services, but with no monthly charge, the service is quite high on the cost per transaction.

I forgot to mention, cardsave includes 350 transactions free with the monthly fee. But again, this all depends on the offer on cashflow etc.

I will still offer PayPal, and also worldpay once the accoutn is fully set up. Takes about a fortnight for them to do the business with the application. Im nearly there!