Accepting credit card payments

Alternatives to Paypal?

[Scooter24]

I'm currently selling prints through my site. There are 6000 photos and prints of each are available in 4-5 sizes and two finishes (glossy and matte).

I'm using Paypal at the moment but am looking for a payment system, which does not require people to sign up.

More specifically:
- it should be possible to accept credit card payments from as many countries as possible
- no fixed monthly or yearly fees, as I'm not sure if the new payments system will increase sales sufficiently to justify fixed monthly or yearly costs
- transaction fee as percentage of sales
- I'm based in Germany.

This rules out Worldpay, as they charge a fixed yearly fee. Also ccnow is not suitable as I have 40000-60000 "products" (6000 photos x 4-5 sizes x 2 finishes), and would have to register all these products into the ccnow database. Any suggestions?

[Morgenhund]

All the processors I've heard of require fixed fees.

If you find out something different from this rule, let me know :)

[Corey Bryant]

You might check out 2Checkout - I cannot remember if they support your country or not. Otherwise, you might take a look at a merchant account. You will be paying a monthly fee for that though.

-Corey

[Import Export]

I had many issues with 2checkout over a few years relationship with them. The problems I experienced with 2checkout:
-Very unprofessional
-Long periods of downtime
-No responses or updates during downtime
-Many ddos attacks (while this is not directly their fault)
-Weekly payment problems
-Bi-weekly payment problems

Maybe someone with experience in the last several years can chime in. They *could* have got their act together (reaching).

Currently I use wells/auth or similarly reputable companies.

If your sales cannot justify the recurring processing fee's, I think it *might* be wise to do what you can with paypal for now - Keep integrating paypal so it is as seemless as possible - Keep learning about merchants/gateways that can work with you once you reach the right level of success - Keep working on making that project a success :o)

[Scooter24]

Well, I have the impression that Paypal is sort of hindering my sales (too complicated to use for most people). A customer once told me that Paypal "is a pain to use".

[moltar]

Paypal does not require Canadian and US merchants to sign people up. I.e. if the seller has US or Canadian account, then the buyer doesn't need an account.

Also Paypal has an API. I am not sure how powerful that is.

[Corey Bryant]

Actually there are more countries now that are supported by Paypal in which the consumer does not have to be a member:

• Australia
  
• Belgium
  
• Canada
  
• France
  
• Hong Kong
  
• Netherlands
  
• United Kingdom
  
• United States
  

-Corey

[Scooter24]

Actually there are more countries now that are supported by Paypal in which the consumer does not have to be a member:

Australia
Belgium
Canada
France
Hong Kong
Netherlands
United Kingdom
United States

You probably are referring to the Paypal Pro service. I'd love to use it, but unfortunately it is not available in Germany yet. Kind of weird, given that Germany has a very big economy.

[Morgenhund]

> Kind of weird, given that Germany has a very big economy.

Don't forget -- a very regulated, too. Possible, PayPal is currently trying to get all the papers needed to be allowed to provide such a service :)

[Miklo]

Why don't you try MultiCards, Chronopay, Ogone or another European payment service provider to get started? As far as I know, they don't charge a monthly fee, just a higher per transaction and commission rate. I don't know if it's a problem to list 40000-60000 products, but I guess that can be solved with a good shopping cart solution as the standard order pages will probably not be sufficient.

[j4mes]

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:-)

[Corey Bryant]

Actually Scooter I am not. This is the 'regular' Paypal service.

-Corey

[pp_rb]

PayPal Account Optional (part of Website Payments Standard) is currently not available for merchants in Germany. It is available for merchants in most other PayPal-supported countries.