Best shopping cart for my website?

B

brian.mobile

Registered User
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Hi,
I am setting up a website and need an online credit card debit facility (shopping cart) for customers - I have one product - it will be one price, initally.

What are the fees / pitfalls / to watch out for?

Can anyone advise on which is the best shopping cart / online credit card debiting facility I can use?

S
 
There's also a Paypal alternative called Moneybookers.com. Not only do they allow you to withdraw funds to an Irish bank account (unsure if Paypal accomodate this yet), but for merchants they require no rolling reserve or setup fees.

Credit Card merchants such as Paypal and 2CheckOut do not allow withdraws of funds to an Irish bank account and there is a requirement to keep a rolling reserve with 2CheckOut aswell as exchanging dollar cheques becomes a bit of a pain.

Moneybookers.com is based in London, seem to work in Euro and offer a number of innovative features for account holders such as the transferal of funds via mobile phone!
 
At present Paypal do allow you transfer funds to an Irish Bank A/C.

If it's international selling, I would recommend Paypal, as it is probably the most common system and is recognised by online shoppers who have probably inevitably explored eBay.
 
Ivorystraws are you sure 2checkout doesn't pay to Irish bank accounts?

Looking at their support pages, they can bill in euro
[broken link removed]

And they claim to payout to Eurozone banks
[broken link removed]

Its a service I have never used, but am actually considering intergrating into a website I own. If you have any experience with the company I would be very interested in hearing how you got on?

I personally would be hesitant in using paypal or moneybookers as it means the customer has to go to another website fill in a load of forms before they can pay you. Would put a lot of non-techie / busy people off using the product or service.

Brian I would recommend you give Bob at http://www.bemoore.com/ a call and have a chat with him. He has set up numerous e-commerce websites.

Cheers

Fintan
 
Hi Fintan,

I currently use the OSCommerce shopping cart (http://www.oscommerce.info/docs/english/) and the info I posted on moneybookers was obtained when I was researching information on shopping carts some time ago so thanks for the update.

Before choosing Paypal, just ensure to check Paypal's feetable first as their exchange rates aren't the best (to and from currency have different rates) and check the fees incurred to deposit money into the Irish account.

By the way, anyone got any ideas on how to significantly reduce these charges ?

Also Paypal has some associated risks but then again, I suppose most of it's competitors do too (search for paypal warning in google: [broken link removed].

But I do agree with Sinewave that Paypal is probably the most common system and is recognised by online shoppers.
Depends on what exactly your looking for in a shopping cart and what your priorities are I suppose i.e. Shopping Cart fees, useability, security, features/functionalities etc.
 
We have just implemented a PayPal solution for our Website and on the whole it has been a good experience.

We found Paypal to be the cheapest solution available. We are paying 3.7% per transaction, and there is no charge to draw down your money into an Irish bank account (if the amount you are drawing down is more than €100). There are no setup fees and/or onging maintenance fees.

We also looked at WorldPay, but they were much more expensive. This is what they quoted me;


Your Quote
Thank you for your interest in WorldPay.
This quotation outlines the Internet Merchant Account and Payment Processing solution and related charges - including details of any additional services that are chosen.
We have also sent you a confirmation email containing the details of your quotation as outlined below. This quotation is valid for 30 days from today.
Internet Merchant Account and Payment Processing solution:
You chose our market-leading solution that provides an Internet Merchant Account, risk management tools, multi-currency payment processing in one package. This solution is designed for small and start-up businesses that may not be able to obtain an Internet Merchant Account from a bank. For larger businesses it also provides the simplicity and efficiency of being able to deal with a single service provider.
Set-up Fee: €145
Annual Fee: €250. A recurring, annual charge.
Additional Currencies: Domestic currency provided as standard part of Internet Merchant Account. € 90 per additional currency.
Transaction Service Charges:
4.5% on the value of all other transactions e.g. credit and charge cards.
50p per transaction for UK Debit cards. €0.80 per transaction for Laser Debit card
€0.1 per transaction for Fraud detection.
Additional services:
In addition to the standard package, you have chosen the following additional services to meet your needs.
Internet terminal - enables you to take payment by mail, telephone and fax. € 100 one off setup fee.
Fraud detection - Is provided as a standard part of Internet Merchant Account and Payment Processing solution.
Click to expand...

Also, Worldpay charge you €4.50 every time you drawdown money from your merchant account.

That said, PayPal is not perfect and we found that

1) The online process/workflow is not as neat as WorldPay's - the user has to enter a bit more information, also they dont seem to take Laser (which WorldPay does)

2) Some of the screens are a bit confsing and they may make your customers think that they have to set up a PayPal account - they do not.

3) If the customer set up a PayPal account before with a particular Credit Card number, then they can only pay you through their PayPal account. This may cause a problem as many people create PayPal accounts, never use them and forget the password.


On the whole we are happy with the PayPal, our customers are paying us through it, and we have been able to draw down into our Irish Bank Account.
 
Didn't PayPal reduce their charges recently? Is 3.7% per transaction the original or reduced charge?
 
ClubMan said:
I don't see any 3.7% rate listed here. Or do you mean the 3.4% + €0.35 rate?
Click to expand...

Hi Clubman - you are correct, it's the 3.4% + €0.35 scheme.

Most of our transactions are for €121 and we are being charged €4.46 per transaction, this is where I got the 3.7% (4.46 / 121) - Sorry!

BTW, we bought a book called "PayPal Hacks" which has a lot of helpful tips & tricks - it was very useful.
 
Thanks for the clarification. I thought that PayPal had reduced their charges in the past few months but a quick search yielded no relevant info. Is that the full extent of the charges that affect your sales? How do these charges compare to operating as a credit card merchant does anybody know?
 
ClubMan said:
Thanks for the clarification. I thought that PayPal had reduced their charges in the past few months but a quick search yielded no relevant info. Is that the full extent of the charges that affect your sales? How do these charges compare to operating as a credit card merchant does anybody know?
Click to expand...

Yes that seems to be the full extent of the charge. There is no annual maintenance charge, and I am not charged for withdrawing my money to an Irish Bank Account (once the amount withdrawn is more than €100). Also, there was no initial set up charge either.

I have never operated a merchant account before, but you can see for the WorlPay quotation that I posted earlier that they are more expensive with their 4.5% rate. Then you have quite hefty initial setup costs and ongoing annual maintance costs.

The final nail in the coffin is the €4.50 charge to withdraw your money. This was not actually quoted in the origional quotation I received, but they mentioned it during the sign up process.

One final word, I am always weary of any company on the web that does not have their prices posted on their website where anybody can view them. With Worldpay you had to go through a quotation process. At least with PayPal their rates are there for everybody to see.
 
So WP seems to be the one!

Is it any advantage that I have a merchant account with Ulster Bank?

Are UB affiliated to any of those boys?

BM
 
I was talking to someone today about using paypal, they mentioned that they lost a lot of money with a paypal merchant account as appartenly paypal don't do any fraud verification.

To say I was shocked is an understatement!
 
2checkout will pay out to Irish banks

If you have a merchant account then using makes sense. I'd keep well away from Worldpay
 
Hi Brian
I use realex, used to use euroconnex but a lot of their business was taken over by realex. The fee you pay depends on the volume of transactions you anticipate. Our arrangement is that it costs a minimum of €250 per month with each transaction costing 48cent. We process approx 500 payments per month so it works out fine. They've been fine for us
 
Hello people.


I would tell you that MONEYBOOKERS is better alternative for PayPal. It covers more countries. Also it offers security against chargeback for merchant. Fraudsters cannot use stolen credit cards in MoneyBookers as this system make random charge on the card and fraudster doesn't know what ammount is billed and to verify the ammount, the fraudster should call the cardholder's bank to ask the ammount billed.

How About shopping cart: I think it's osCommerce and Shop Script Premium. Unfortunatelly I don't have funds to pay for Shop-Script Premium. :((
 
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