Service Provider Online Payments...

[Gibble]

I'm setting up a website for a client and they want to be able to accept payments online as an option to sending out bills by mail and waiting for payment by mail.

Since this is a small business what service can they use (other than paypal) to accept money online with very little cost...

[Gibble]

ps. Also, seeing as how this will be for customers to pay bills on an allready existing account, credit card fraud is NOT an issue.

Nobody can be *that* stupid to attempt it.

...well...I shouldn't say nobody ;)

[Nermin]

i know we use netteler or neteller :), clearchex,
firepay and central coin

[crosenblum]

Unfortunately, the key is the need for a merchant account with a credit card providor.

There are competitors of paypal. But no one sticks out as better than paypal.

It's usually better to go thru a site such as paypal, because they are all pre-built methods of collecting money.

[Gibble]

I've heard some bad things about paypal in the past. And while I do use it to make payments, I've heard of people having problems with getting money from their paypal account when they've been paid.

And if we're talking about $100s of dollars per payment...

...my client would be SEVERELY pissed if paypal decided to lock the account, and prevent her from getting at her money.

[crosenblum]

Are you the host for their site?

If not, you may want to consult their host, sometimes they will have ecommerce packages, to help setup the ssl, and so forth to process the orders.

[mattglet]

Gibble-
The thing you might be thinking of (with people not being able to get their money from PayPal), is the withdraw limit. It's $500 per month. It's very easy to get that limit pushed up though, even if you have a personal account. If you upgrade to a business or premier account, I'm pretty sure there's no limit whatsoever. I could be wrong.

-Matt

[Gibble]

I'll be setting them up with a webhost, they don't have a site at all yet.

Maybe I'll check out paypals business plan...

[Gibble]

Oh...I forgot to mention, this has to work in Canada.

[crosenblum]

Just looked on google directory service.

[directory.google.com...]

[darkblue.com...]

[directory.google.com...]

[spectrumadvantage.com...]

I even found this on Canadian Ecommerce.

[researchandmarkets.com...]

[chilifish.com...]

Try those out.

[martyt]

It's really not very hard to get a merchant account and to integrate a web site payment system. Hooking up Authorize.Net isn't a "no brainer" but it doesn't take much more than the ability to read and do a little web coding.

If your client is an established business, taking payments from PayPal or some other canned, third-party payment provider will look pretty hokey to their customers. I suspect the customers would be a lot more likely to go to a payment page on the client's web site and enter their credit card information than to go through PayPal to make the same payment.

PayPal has its place, don't get me wrong. But in this case, I don't think it's the right solution.

[Gibble]

The client is cheap...

And it's a small business run out of their home.