Forum Moderators: buckworks
there are plenty of questions here regarding how to accept CC payments.
But is it possible to _pay_ to credit cards (say, to pay the suppliers)?
- what payment gateways support this?
- what are fees?
Thank you in advance!
You want to pay your suppliers with a credit card?
I am not aware of any credit cards (or processors) that allow money to be added to a card, except to issue a full or partial refund of a charge already performed. )Apparently our processor allows you to refund more than 100% of the original charge, but I have never tried it, nor had any reason to).
As the number of debit cards increases, in the future I expect more commercial ways of being able to add money to debit cards from sources other than the holder's bank (although that opens a huge can of worms in regards to potential money laundering).
But wouldn't you just give the supplier your credit card number and they charge you?
-Corey
1. you build an e-commerce site featuring products from numerous suppliers (many of them)
2. you accept CC payments from end customers to your own merchant account
3. you pay the supplies (earning your own comission)
This is a pretty usual business model, and a normal solution for 3. would be to pay suppliers using EFT (Electronic Funds Transfer).
The problem is, what if EFT is not available? As far as I know, EFT is common for intra-USA payments, but if you or your suppliers are located outside of the USA, either IFT as a service is not offered by your non-USA bank, or cross-country banking fee is outrage.
One way could be to ask the supplier to open a merchant account with their bank (if they do not have any yet), then payment from the customer will go directly to suppliers' account. But I expect this could be a problem for many suppliers as well.
Therefore, options to pay suppliers outside of IFT could be:
- ask them to provide CC number and "transfer" funds there (what I'm going to do)
- use PayPal, when available
LifeinAsia: I know this is not usual, but the world is constantly changing around us, isn't? :-)
justgowithit: no, I want to transfer funds to suppliers from my merchant account to their CC
If there any other means how to organize finances for such a model?
I want to transfer funds to suppliers from my merchant account
The part where I'm confused is that your merchant account is not a holding account. It does not have or maintain a balance to draw upon.
Merchant accounts are attached to your DDA account - which holds a balance.
It sounds to me like you're drop-shipping from various suppliers, which is not an unusual business model. Can't you apply for NET terms with these suppliers?
cross-country banking fee is outrage.
If you're talking amounts of just a few hundred dollars, then PayPal is probably your best option. If a lot of your suppliers are in the same country, you might want to look into opening an account in that country (with a bank that has good online services)- then just periodically send big chunks to that account and use it to pay your suppliers.
That's what we do in Korea. We work with dozens of hotels there, some of whom we only pay a hundred dollars a few times/month. Several times/month we send money to top up our bank account in Korea, then use online banking to make daily payments from that account to the hotels. Depending on the hotel's bank, the charge is about $0-$.75/transaction. It's all factored in to the cost of doing bsuiness.
[edited by: LifeinAsia at 4:24 pm (utc) on Aug. 10, 2007]
Thank you all guys for your suggestions on this topic!
