Alternatives to paypal? Your Top Picks For Merchant accounts?

[jessie_0011]

Can anyone suggest their top alternatives to PayPal? You'd really be helping me out, as this is my first venture into ecommerce.

[cama-bie]

Hello and Thanks for start this thread i´ll need it too.
Thanks.

[mxer210]

I went through the whole ecommerce thing, and would highly recommend PayPal Pro. A lot of people have had bad experiences with PayPal, but I have used other merchant and they are pretty aweful too. They had all these hidden fees and the monthly fees were as high as $80/month and were eating my business alive. PayPals $20/month setup is a pretty sweet deal.

[Adam Gaines]

http://www.2checkout.com/ is a popular one. No account is needed to pay money which is helpful for customers. although there is a $49 signup fee.

[Hostegrity]

If you're based in the US, I suggest getting an actual merchant account as opposed to a third party processor.

[nado]

GBuy!

Google's paypal. Although it's not quite out yet, but will be by the end of this year.

[jgarifuna]

I've used both, PayPal and 2Checkout and now have a real merchant account which is far better than both.

Here are the facts I faced:

1) 2Checkout (2C):
My Averall Rating: 3/10
- advantages:
---------- no monthly gateway or statement fee
---------- deposits money automatically into bank account
---------- customer does not need to create account with 2C to pay for your products

- dissadvantages:
---------- hard to get someone on the phone for emergency tech support
---------- setup fee of $49
---------- high per transaction fees of $0.45 + 5.5% (at least it was, check for latest figures)
---------- deposits are made biweekly to your bank account (at least it used to be, check for this)
---------- (this is why I said enough)do not allow you to charge your customers cards, so if your customers call to place orders and provide you with their credit card number over the phone, it is a violation of 2C's policy for you to charge your customers card yourself. Your customers have to be the ones inputing their card numbers.

2) PayPal:
My Averall Rating: 7/10
[B]- advantages:[/B]
---------- FREE and easy to setup
---------- no monthly gateway or statement fee
---------- considerable low per transaction fees ($0.30 + 2.9%, again be sure to check latest) compared to 2C
---------- provides an ATM card

- dissadvantages:
---------- hard to get someone on the phone for emergency tech support
---------- you have to manually instruct it to deposit money into your bank account (I'm not aware of an auto deposit, but you can check)
---------- money takes about 3 days to appear in your bank account, after you manually request the transfer
---------- (this is why I said enough)I was experiencing their system beign down for maintenance around mid night very frequently, so I felt like I could have been losing sales.
---------- Buyers were required to create accounts with tPayPal. Some of my clients would report to me that some of them would not buy because of this, while others reported they would not buy becase they could not remember their PayPal account information for subsequent purchases (we can tell the clients to click on the "forgot password" link, but is still an additional unnecessary step from the store owner's behalf)

I still use paypal to pay certain contractors, but not as my main merchant provider for my e-Commerce sites.

I finally had enough with PayPal and decided to try a real merchant provider and my sales went up almost instantly, inspite of the monthly gateway + statement fees.

My current merchant account provider is:

3) Pay Junction (payJunction.com)
My Averall Rating: 10/10
- advatages:
---------- a real person picks up the phone for tech supports
---------- are willing to accomodate for custom e-commerce programming needs. I developed my own e-commerce system and they worked with me till the end to get it working properly with their system. (I was very satisfied on this end)
---------- you can charge your customers credit cards directly in their secure web-system. I get a lot of orders by phone and when I asked customers for their credit cards, I can then charge it myself (well my staff) and have the order on its way. This is very convenient for customers that do not trust shopping online.

---------- low per transaction fees. It could go below 2% and around $0.10 - $0.20 per transaction if I recall correctly.
---------- customer does not need to create account with 2C to pay for your products
---------- oh, before I forget, they batch the transactions daily so the money is in your bank account usually within 2 days.

- dissadvantages:
---------- the nightmare of every starter, monthly gateway + statement fees, which I don't mind considering that I'm selling more than I was with PayPal and 2C


The verdict:

Of course I also played around with other merchants such as iBill, but these are my top 3. So far my usage is:

- Pay Junction for serious e-commerce business
- PayPal for occasional contractors payment and for those clients that would rather use the monthly fees of a real merchant account for other business expenses or have low sales volume.
- 2Checkout a thing of the passed for me. I'll probably consider it, as a substitute for my PayPal activities, if PayPal goes out of business, which is very unlikely.

There you have it. I hope it helps.

[Outta Hand]

Hello Guys and Gals,

Authorize.NET is a good e-commerce transaction processing tool to use... suprised it has not been mentioned here

Verisign is another good one

You've got to have sizable stake invested into your online business already.... perhaps transition from 2Checkout to Authorize.net once you hit over a $1000 a month in sales would be a great idea. That just a thought.

[jgarifuna]

Hello Guys and Gals,

Authorize.NET is a good e-commerce transaction processing tool to use... suprised it has not been mentioned here

Verisign is another good one

You've got to have sizable stake invested into your online business already.... perhaps transition from 2Checkout to Authorize.net once you hit over a $1000 a month in sales would be a great idea. That just a thought.

Hi Outta Hand,

can you quantify what you mean by good? What are the ins and outs for instance, so that I wanted to consider it I can make a decision based on the facts, not that I don't trust your opinion, but I believe that the numbers speak very louder, since simply "good" is subjective, to the individuals interpretation of good. What's good for one may not be good for the other and the numbers are what they are, even if we don't like them.

I guess what I'm trying to say is "good" does not tell me much. As entrepreneurs, we certainly appreciate it when a little time is saved here and there. Given that you already have some experience with it, I think that it would be great to point out more specifically those good experiences and the bad ones, since no company is perfect.

[jessie_0011]

jgarifuna ,

Your comments and ratings were SO UNBELIEVABLE HELPFUL! Thank you so much!

I haven't decided in which direction I'll go yet, but I will definitely let you know.

[jgarifuna]

by jessie_0011
jgarifuna ,

Your comments and ratings were SO UNBELIEVABLE HELPFUL! Thank you so much!

I haven't decided in which direction I'll go yet, but I will definitely let you know.

Glad you found it beneficial. Just in case I have also posted a semi-detail 10-items that are needed to get an e-Commerce site going at:

http://www.youngentrepreneur.com/for...ad.php?p=32090

[john82]

www.chronopay.com is another good option you can go with, they are stable, reliable payment processor providing excellent service and support.

[jessie_0011]

GoDaddy seems to have a good merchant account system. and they were voted #1 merchant account from the entrepreneur press

[Outta Hand]

Sure i can qualify. By "good" i mean the following....

A good transaction processing rate; better then 2checkout.com
A good fraud detection service built in; some other merchant account providers don't offer the best fraud protection services. (You get what you pay for)

The options i provided may cost more in the short run but will cost less in the long run. Now i could get into stats about this sort of thing but i won't just to save time. Now if people are looking for factual or quantitive information feel free to PM me.

Hi Outta Hand,

can you quantify what you mean by good? What are the ins and outs for instance, so that I wanted to consider it I can make a decision based on the facts, not that I don't trust your opinion, but I believe that the numbers speak very louder, since simply "good" is subjective, to the individuals interpretation of good. What's good for one may not be good for the other and the numbers are what they are, even if we don't like them.

I guess what I'm trying to say is "good" does not tell me much. As entrepreneurs, we certainly appreciate it when a little time is saved here and there. Given that you already have some experience with it, I think that it would be great to point out more specifically those good experiences and the bad ones, since no company is perfect.

[anythingshewantz]

Does anyone have more info on GoDaddy?