n0torious
Joined: Eons Ago
# Posts: 5
|
Posted: 2003-Sep-06 07:00
Hello Everybody!
My name is Evan and I am starting a small car audio and performance company on the Internet. I will be accepting credit cards. I have been stumped about the service I'm going to use to process credit cards for me. I'm too small for my own merchant account but I'm big enough that I need lots of flexibility for processing cards. These are my main issues.
- I need a service then either sends the money directly into my bank account or does it at least once a week. No longer and a week is even a bit long.
- I need a service that doesn't bill the customer right away after they fill in their CC info. I want it to be "pending" until I say the order can go through. That way if a customer buys a product that I don't have in stock, I don't have to refund there money and I can just cancel the order if they don't want to wait.
- To prevent fraud and charge-backs I plan on making sure that the Shipping and Billing address both match the address on the credit card. I need some way to program that feature into my cart once I have it set-up. I think most CC services have this feature.
- I have a few policies that make it so I can charge a 20% restocking fee if a product comes back to us damaged or with missing parts. I need some way I can manually make charges to to my customer’s credit card (with there approval).
I have not found a service that can meet all of these requirements. I do have an idea though. I could take the persons credit card info over a secure server (SSL) and then manually charge them over the Internet... However, does anyone know of a company that would process the credit cards for me over the Internet? What I mean is this... I get the CC info over a secure server and then I go to the credit card processor and put in their name, card number and amount. That would be so great if I could do that. That's the easy part. Now I need to find the service that I could do that with. Does anyone know of anything like that? I need something soon so if anyone can help, that would be great! Thanks.
|
 |
RodB
Joined: Eons Ago
# Posts: 1435
|
Posted: 2003-Sep-06 10:28
The simplest way to do this as a start out is to collect the CC number and then process it through a friend who has a machine and will pay you cash. You can do this until you grow. I have done this for many small clients.
There are also a number of low cost processors.
|
|
n0torious
Joined: Eons Ago
# Posts: 5
|
Posted: 2003-Sep-06 19:00
I would do that but I don't have any friends that have a machine like that. I know there are a ton of processors around but most of them don't tell you your "flexibility" in details. I need to talk to someone that has experience doing this.
|
|
RodB
Joined: Eons Ago
# Posts: 1435
|
Posted: 2003-Sep-07 01:39
Check out Echo Inc or World Pay
|
|
RodB
Joined: Eons Ago
# Posts: 1435
|
Posted: 2003-Sep-07 01:39
Also what about Paypal?
|
|
n0torious
Joined: Eons Ago
# Posts: 5
|
Posted: 2003-Sep-07 08:21
Echo Inc and world pay are for merchants in the US only. I'm a Canadian bases company but I only sell in the US. Paypal requires customers to sign up with them before they can buy from me which really makes things difficult and can drive away lots of customers. Anyone else?
|
|
RodB
Joined: Eons Ago
# Posts: 1435
|
Posted: 2003-Sep-08 11:38
In Canada http://www.internetsecure.com/
|
|
n0torious
Joined: Eons Ago
# Posts: 5
|
Posted: 2003-Sep-08 16:48
The only problem with them is that they only pay out once every 2 weeks instead of once a week.
|
|
RodB
Joined: Eons Ago
# Posts: 1435
|
Posted: 2003-Sep-09 06:26
Ok sorry out of ideas then
|
|
patrickh
Joined: Oct 05, 2001
# Posts: 2187
|
Posted: 2003-Sep-09 15:25
I have been looking into PayPal the last couple days, if you use them as a shopping cart, they do not require the users to sign up for PayPal -- they just process their credit card through PayPal as a one time transaction. That was the dealbreaker for me, as this will allow people to pay with either existing PayPal funds or no-hassle cc payments without having to sign up. PayPal also lets you dump the fees to your checking account whenever you want I think, though there is usually a few days processing time if I remember correctly.
Another option you might want to look into is Yahoo! Stores, they seem to be getting increasingly popular. They do force a $50/month charge + the standard processing fee's, and it might look a little less hokey than PayPal.
The biggest downside of using PayPal is I believe it just looks unproffessional, but I will do it for now in order to save money until I can get a few months of sales and gauge if it is worth eating the merchant fees.
[ Message was edited by: patrickh 09/09/2003 07:26 am ]
|
|
n0torious
Joined: Eons Ago
# Posts: 5
|
Posted: 2003-Sep-09 19:28
I'm 100% positive that my customer must sign up with paypal. If not I would probably be using it right now.
|
|
thejenn
Joined: Aug 08, 2001
# Posts: 9196
|
Posted: 2003-Sep-10 21:51
They do not have to sign up with PayPal if you use the credit card option. I have a non-profit site that I setup that uses PayPal and their customers have not had to register. They can simply pay with a credit card in the checkout process.
|
|
patrickh
Joined: Oct 05, 2001
# Posts: 2187
|
Posted: 2003-Sep-10 22:08
Actually that is what I thought also Jenn, but after n0torious' comment I went ahead and downloaded their shopping cart manual to double check. It looks like you actually do have to make them sign up for PayPal, but really all it does is ask them to set a password at the bottom of the checkout screen -- the page where they are filling in their credit card and address information for payment actually doubles as their signup sheet. I'm going to give them a shot for now, to be honest there really arent any other options unless I want to start paying for a merchant account.
|
|
thejenn
Joined: Aug 08, 2001
# Posts: 9196
|
Posted: 2003-Sep-11 02:55
Hmm...strange. I remember going through the process to purchase on their site to see if it made me signup...maybe I forgot that I had to put a password. I do remember that it's not like I had to "sign up" and then go back and buy...
|
|
Inbox
