Web business owners help

Colbaker

Colbaker

Colbaker

Associate
Joined
8 Dec 2004
Posts
1,970
Location
Paignton, Devon
Hi all,

I was thinking of setting up an online business but was wondering how much (if anything) it costs so you can have a payment page in which the customer can pay via Credit Card/Debit Card or direct debit?

Thanks
 
I believe that http://www.nochex.com/ have amongst the lowest rates available.

You could try your bank and ask them about merchant services, but the costs may be higher. Also, what some banks do is that after payment has been received from a customer, they hold on to the money (before transferring it into your account), for X weeks, where X = any number.

Banks make a lot of money in interest, in the above way, so be careful.
 
There are a load of different services on offer for this. What most people don't realise is the general structure of taking payments online.

So, at a minimum you need:

  • A host, for web pages, but it needs to support certain technologies that your ecommerce package will require. You could have course get a hosted ecommerce platform, which takes care of all this for you, but you lose a bit of control.
  • An ecommerce package (this should come prebuilt to accept certain payment gateways)
  • A payment gateway (PayPal, SagePay, they will charge you in different ways for different services)
  • Merchant services (usually added on to your banking facilities, the banks mainly charge a % per transaction)
 
Steer clear of processing credit cards yourself, PCI compliance in a pain in the proverbial.

Merchant account, you may need to provide 2 years worth of accounts in order to get a bank to create one for you.
 
OldCoals said:
Steer clear of processing credit cards yourself, PCI compliance in a pain in the proverbial.

Merchant account, you may need to provide 2 years worth of accounts in order to get a bank to create one for you.
Click to expand...

Only becomes a pain if you want to store crfedit card details, otherwise, the lowest level of PCI compliance is fine.

Some banks are harder to get a merchant account from than others :)
 
Firstly, you will require an ecommerce solution. I personally use Zencart, but there are a plethora of others. Zencart is free, all you need is a web host with a MySQL database.
After this, you bolt on a payment processer.

I use Paypal and Nochex. Both of these include merchant services. They are roughly the same cost wise. You do not need to be PCI compliant with these, as all the data is done on their servers, and not yours. They route you to an external gateway and send them back once it has been completed. No card details are stored, or even pass through your site.

You will need to set up a business account with PayPal to take Website payments with them, and you need to be fully verified with them. The basic rate is 20p+3.3% (IIRC) Linky Though if you have a lot more goign through, apply for their merchant pricing to reduce the rates. You only need a merchant account for the larger companies such as Sagepay etc, as they do not supply merchant services, and pp/nc do.


I am getting rid of NoChex. Not much use, and I like to simplify my accounts.

If you have any questions, I can help, as I do the same thing. Can always trust me if you like!
 
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