Credit cards / Pay Pal

[Sunny]

Looking for suggestions for credit/debit card companies to use for clients..most every business owner I have talked to says they are not pleased with the company they use..fees are kinda high, machine is too costly, etc. Thanks for any help!

[CobyPhoto]

Sunny

All depends upon how many credit card payments you take. I have been dealing with credit card service companies for abour 8 years and yes, there is always a complaint on any company that I use. Most are really slimy, like those really cheap camera companies that advertise low prices only to sell you expensive accessories (that should have come with the camera in the first place) to inflate the price.

If you take only a few credit card payments a month, then it probably won't be worth your time to purchase a machine and have the merchant account. Use PayPal. However, if you do a great deal of credit card payments, you need to get a merchant account and have your own machine to take the cards. It is a pretty sizable difference in the fees.

PayPal will charge you about 3% on your transactions. I pay 1.49% on MC/VISA transactions, plus a per transaction charge of .20 cents (all companies have this) and a .23 cent batch fee each time I close ou the machine at night. Debit costs me .55 cents per transaction.

There are a few miscellaneous charges that occur once a month too, like a statement fee, of anywhere from 9.95 to 18.00 a month depending upon the company.

The rates I quoted you are only for SWIPED transactions, too. If you do alot of phone orders or mail orders where the card is not present and the transaction is keyed, then the rates jump considerably. (More risk invovled.) If that is what you are doing, use PayPal, it will not benefit you to have your own machine.

Just to give you an example, on an average, of 6K in credit transactions a month, you would pay 180.00 to PayPal. If you have your own machine and account, you would only pay about 100.00 in fees etc. (Your machine cost would pay for itself in a few months.)

Lastly, there are many things that dictate what rate your credit card service firm will offer you. The amount of transactions, average size, percentage of swiped transactions vs. keyed, etc.

Best thing is to do your research and compare rates, fees etc. and READ the contract they want you to sign. Make sure you understand it and it doesn't have hidden fees in there you were not aware of.

Hope this helps you some.

C James

[Silvernic]

Great answer. Thanks Coby.

[cmalana]

I would ask yourself what payments you would most likely take via credit cards.

For any online ordering, we use Exposure Manager and they handle the credit card transaction.

We also accept credit cards for retainer fees or portrait sessions, but most of the time, people still end up paying with a check anyway. Since we take full payment prior to delivering the service or products, you can always wait for the check to clear.

We got our credit card service through Chase (our bank). I believe they go through paymentech. Since we don't do it much, we still have the old imprint devices and just call the number in via a phone.

We don't see a lot of direct credit card transactions (most are done through exposure manager) so it works for us. We take Visa,MC, Discover, and AMEX.

[Sunny]

Thanks for your reply..do you know how exposure manager compares to pay pal?

[jeffkohn]

Originally Posted by Sunny

Thanks for your reply..do you know how exposure manager compares to pay pal?

Just to be clear, Exposure Manager is a turnkey service, not just payment processing. If that's what you want, then fine. But if you're just looking for a way to add credit card payments to your biz that may not be the best way to go.

You may also want to look at ProPay.com and Authorize.net. Both of these allow you to accept credit cards from customers, without the custom having to set up an account like they do with PayPal. I haven't used either of these services but this discussion comes up in the Pro Digital forum at DPReview quite often and there seem to be some happy customers there. Might want to do a search.

[LadyShutterBug]

i use paypal. i average about 2 credit card transactions permonth... most people like to just write a check.

my print orders are fulfilled through photoreflect... whic again is a turnkey service that hosts my galleries and handles all shoping cart functions, credit card transactions, etc. and just sends me a check for my cut each month.

[CobyPhoto]

Just to expand on the topic a litte...

Carlo brought up an important point too. Most Banks DO NOT process cards directly. They go through a card service company, and thus, you are paying a middle man. There are many actual card service firms that process cards for banks, so you can eliminate the percentage fee the bank is tagging you with. (Usually anywhere from .10 - .20%)

Again, look at the volumn and gross amount of card transactions a month and that will make the decision for you on having your own machine and account or using someone like paypal, propay.com or authorize.net. (All of these cost about the same...roughly 3% of the transaction amount plus a set transaction fee.)

If you are a PPA member there is a card firm that offers you better rates than most. MTG (Midwest Transaction Group) www.midtrans.com (I haven't used this one, but the rates look good and the "other" charges seem to be in line with what else is out there.)

I would also like to point out, that if you have credit card payment and it is EASY to use, (i.e. swipe the card and they sign.) You sell more, AND you don't have to worry about the check being returned NSF.

I try to do ALL my wedding retainers on a major credit card. I hate it when someone writes a check and it is returned because they don't know how to balance their checkbook and the bank didn't cover it. Too many headaches.

C James

[Clayton Wallace]

I use authorize.net. Very secure, reliable. But a hassle for online interface. Fees are reasonable. Nearly all my cc purchase are through my site, though I do run some from time to time.

[CobyPhoto]

Be aware, that if you use authorize.net, you MUST also have a merchant account to process transactions. authorize.net only processes the transaction from an on-line purchase on your web site and directs it to your existing merchant account. You pay a fee to authorize.net and your merchant account discount/fees.

For what authorize.net does, they are pretty reasonable, but you would have to do a pretty large number of transactions a month to justify the service fee (@$20.00 / Month) and then a .10 per transaction fee.

Just adding to your post Clayton. I don't think Sunny is looking for on-line transaction processing, I think he is more interested in face to face transactions.

CJ

[AndrewSA]

Does Paypal have a monthly charge or per transaction charge?

I used to use Propay a long time ago, and noticed on their site recently that it looks like they have a monthly charge. Do all sites do this now?

Originally Posted by LadyShutterBug

i use paypal. i average about 2 credit card transactions permonth... most people like to just write a check.

my print orders are fulfilled through photoreflect... whic again is a turnkey service that hosts my galleries and handles all shoping cart functions, credit card transactions, etc. and just sends me a check for my cut each month.

[ndsimm]

Originally Posted by swinglight

Does Paypal have a monthly charge or per transaction charge?

I used to use Propay a long time ago, and noticed on their site recently that it looks like they have a monthly charge. Do all sites do this now?

PayPal doesn't have a monthly charge....I currently use them as I have just recently started taking credit cards and my volume isn't high enough for me to get my own machine yet...

[debibelt]

i use paynetsystems.com
never had a problem
got a machine off ebay and they had no problems programming it
$10 a month and then i forget the fees, but taking credit cards allows me to sell over $250 at a time (great!) which I could not do with propay

[skdupre]

Clayton,

Did a search on "credit cards" and your post came up. I looked over your site and it appears you use the same online gallery that I do. The online ordering is exactly the same. Mine is through Pounds and it's called PhotoManager. I would like to add credit cards as a payment option as I currently only offer checks. I do have a PayPal account and plan to add that as well. My photography business is pretty small. I'm a high school computer teacher (webmastery & multimedia) and have photographed weddings on the side for over 14 years. My sales are around 20K / year, but I'm seeing that with the online gallery I have a good opportunity to increase sales. With my low sales I just need to process a few cc transactions a month via online.

Since the post is over a year old I thought you may have some new wisdom to share. I'll also add this to the post to see what all folks are doing.

Thanks in advance.

Sean

[HotHolly]

PayPal does have a monthly charge of $30 if you use them as a credit card processing source. Its via their virtual terminal, no buy it now buttons required. You type in all the credit card info and it appears in your paypal account instantly.