# Website accepting credit cards



## Hibernicatio (18 Jan 2007)

Has anyone had any experience of setting up a merchant account to accept credit card payments on their website. 

Do you go to your local bank first? Can they accept payments from credit cards on your behalf? 

Is it possible to get a third party to take all the risk on your behalf, like moneybookers.com?

I have sent our local Irish Banks emails but they dont seem to want to reply to them.  Possibly they want nothing to do with a new website trying to sell products?

Any help or a point to a good resource on all options would be much appreciated.

BTW: Goods/services will be sold to a European market, hopefully further afield also.


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## MugsGame (18 Jan 2007)

I would go to a web payment processor like  first, rather than your bank. I think you'll need a processor anyway, and they may be able to advise on and expedite setting up the merchant account.


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## Ravima (19 Jan 2007)

sign up with PAYPAL.


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## businessshop (19 Jan 2007)

I would have to recommend Worldpay, they handle everything so you don't need to worry about storing and protecting credit card details etc. They have products which are relatively easy to integrate into your website. As for setting up, they tell you exactly what you need and their online form gives you a good indicator if you have everything or not.


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## johndoe64 (19 Jan 2007)

it would depend on how many transactions we are talking about realex can be expensive, I have mine with euroconnex which are a division of BOI...talk to your branch manager and he should be able to sort it out for you.


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## Hibernicatio (19 Jan 2007)

Thanks for the replies.

So an Irish bank cannot accept cc payments but will through an intermediary such as euroconnex, realex, worldpay etc that offer secure servers for a percentage fee.

How then do these differ from companies such as moneybookers ot NETeller, which a lot of the gaming sites seem to use.  Are these effectively online banks?

It is purely speculative at the minute but we would hope to have many small value transactions as opposed to few large value transactions.


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## BetterBiz (19 Jan 2007)

I would recommend testing your product service buy using paypal, your customers don't need Paypal accounts to pay you, they can use credit cards. www.paypal.com has no set up fees and you can be up and running in minutes. Then if your product/service takes off you can then transfer over to direct credit card processing if you can get advantageous rates, however I think Paypal are pretty competitive see below:

Monthly SalesPrice Per Transaction€0.00 EUR-€2,500.00 EUR3.4% + €0.35 EUR€2,500.01 EUR-€10,000.00 EUR2.9% + €0.35 EUR€10,000.01 EUR-€50,000.00 EUR2.7% + €0.35 EUR€50,000.01 EUR-€100,000.00 EUR2.4% + €0.35 EUR> €100,000.00 EUR1.9% + €0.35 EUR


www.betterbusinessresults.com


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## rmelly (21 Jan 2007)

MugsGame said:


> I would go to a web payment processor like  first, rather than your bank. I think you'll need a processor anyway, and they may be able to advise on and expedite setting up the merchant account.


 
I've used realex in the past and would recommend.


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## JazzyJeff (22 Jan 2007)

i too would reccommend testing the site fist with Paypal.  If the number of transactions increases then you can consider using relaex of worldpay to process your payments.

I used Paypal on one of my sites for quite a while and now use worldpay as they process Laser card payments.

Both are very easy to setup and there are plenty of tutorials out there on how to integrate your shopping cart with them.


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## timmy1 (22 Jan 2007)

Hi
  What are the charges for accepting payment of say 100euros
How much do Realex charge?
How much do the banks charge?

thanks


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## jcollins (24 Jan 2007)

We used PayPal for a year but we have switched to Realex in the last few months.

Initially we looked at World Pay, but they were very expensive to set up, and their transaction charges were much higher than Paypal, so we decided to go with Paypal.

We bought a book called "PayPal Hacks" on Amazon and found this extremely helpful when setting up our website. It explains how PayPal works, and shows you many shortcuts to make it easier to implement.

We used Paypal for just over a year, but we decided to move to Realex because of the following;

1) While PayPal does not require your customers to set up a PayPal account, we found that customers found the screens confusing and many of them believed that they did indeed have to open a PayPal A/C. This put some of our customers off, or just confused the hell out of them

2) PayPal deducts its transaction fees directly from each transaction. This creates a lot of work from a VAT point of view, as you are liable for the VAT on the amount before the charge. If you are accounting for VAT on a Cash Basis this can cause a lot of work for you. Also, PayPal does not issue you with a bill as such, so you have to account for the transaction charge to keep things right.

3) PayPal does not issue you with any paper statements. You can download your transactions electronically. The problem here is that if you had an Audit you could end up with a hard time trying to prove to the Auditor that you have not accounted for all the money - you have no independant paper to prove otherwise.

4) If your customer used their credit card previously with paypal, and created an account at the time, but no no longer remembers the password then PayPal will not let you process the transaction because the credit card number is already associated with a PayPal account, and insists that your customer logs in.

5) For security reasons PayPal requires the user to enter a lot of information - Name, Address etc along with the standard Credit Card Details. While this is mostly a good thing it really slows the user down. Also, they expect the address in a format very similar to the US or UK idea of ZIP codes or Postal Codes. This really slows the customer down.

We have since opened a Merchent Account with EuroConnex, and use Realex to process the transactions.

The advantages are;

1) Their rates are actually lower than PayPals in a lot of cases

2) They will accept Laser Cards. Laser cards are great as a lot of business customers prefer them, and the transaction charges are fixed at 20 cent irrespective of the transaction amount

3) Both Euro connex & Relaex present bills for the transaction charges on a monthly basis and Direct Debit your own bank account. This solves the VAT issues I mentioned earlier.

4) The money automatically comes into your bank account from your merchent account on a daily basis (but 3 days behind)

5) You receive proper bank statements for the Merchant account - you can stand over your accounts.

6) Your customer only has to enter Name, Credit Card No, CCV code and Expiry Date - very quick

The only advantage that PayPal has over Realex is that PayPal do not have a minimum monthly charge - you pay noting if you sell nothing.

With Realex you have a minimum charge, but it covers you for a block of transactions, above which you pay per transaction.

That all said, we are much happier with the Realex solution


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## Hibernicatio (24 Jan 2007)

Thanks guys.  The only thing I am still not clear on is the difference between realex and euroconnex.  Euroconnex holds the merchant account and realex processes the payments.  Is there a single company that can do both.


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## jackdublin (30 Jan 2007)

hi, i have been involved with a web development company setting up companies to sell online for the last 8 years and now run a .com business where all of our business is done online. firstly there is not a single payments processing company that can do both and i would only recommend realex. realex then connects to your merchant ID number, held say with AIB or EuroConex ( who were owned by BoI ). your merchant bank then in turn transfers the money to your bank account, which may not necessarily be with the same bank at all. you pay a per transaction fee to realex, which falls with volume, and you pay a % per transaction fee to you merchant bank. hope this helps.


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## brian.mobile (30 Jan 2007)

PayPal is handy, not perfect, mind you. Wrecked my head for a long time and people who are 'not too familiar' with PayPal always used to ring up cussing the system. But it's the easiest all rounder for a newbie on-line.

Your designer can copy code into your for simple to moderate buying options.

If you have a machine (merchant account) you can use a neat system called Mals E-Commerce - grabs the cc number securely, you log in to 'view it', and punch it in your terminal manually... Very slick. More work, but you can halve your processing fees by not having a 'live transaction' (we went from 3.8%-ish online with Paypal (and the headaches) to 1.6 % using the Mal's / terminal combination - that _low_ % was a deal a professional association we are members of did with a bank). 

Granted it had to be manually input, but not one customer complaint so far and if the terminal is next to the screen - it's a doddle. 

See http://www.mals-e.com/ - Mal, the lad who invented it is Anti-Porn and Anti Viagra, shame on you Mal!

BM


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## ccraig (22 Jun 2009)

Hi Jack,
Do realex just capture the credit card details and store them securely passing the payment request to the merchant bank?


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