Merchant Accounts and Pay Pal Pro

Whats the best answer?

[otisbrad]

Ok - so PayPal Pro still isn't really up and running - or at least it seems no one in this forum has gotten through all the rough spots yet. Sounds like a good idea in theory - but when will it really work.

Otherwise - 2CO and Worldpay are two popular merchant account options - but they seem to have lots of problems.

Authorize.net seems to be a good/best gateway.

Any ideas for a new web business merchant account?

thanks Otis

[Corey Bryant]

Are you looking for a third party processor or a merchant account? You mention 2CO which is actually a third party processor so I was not certain.

It all depends on where you are located and how much volume you do.

As far as gateways, I would actually say the LinkPoint is larger than Authorize.net. LinkPoint is sold by the top three ISOs / acquirers in the United States actually. larger does not mean better of course, it all depends on your needs. If you need extra fraud protection, Verisign's Payflow has some great service. LinkPoint will have LinkShield hopefully soon as well. Payflow and Authorize.net will charge for periodic billing and transaction fees as well while LinkPoint will not.

-Corey

[otisbrad]

Hi Corey - I have read a lot of your posts on this topic - I think you have mentioned 2CO is 3rd party for CSI which I am checking out.

I am in California - starting a "community site" in which customers will pay for advertising on site - I hope to achieve approximately $10k per month by end of first year.

Looking for a merchant account and the PayPal Pro sounds like a great option but afraid its just not ready and PayPal by itself is too limited.

thx

[iloveu]

My sales is around $20K per month. We have PayPal and 2CO for customer's payment choice. Even we promote PayPal, most customers choose 2CO to pay. The big problem is sometimes 2CO cancels the payment after we ship the order out, so we have no way to take the order back and just lose money. Some payments, we think they are OK based on our experience, and we ship the order out, but finally they get cancelled. We call customers, and they don't know the reason either. Some payments, we think so suspicious and hold them, but they are OK with 2CO, and we are complained by delaying the shipping. I am not blaming 2CO cancel the payment, I just think 2CO's processing ways is not good. They take the payment first without saying anything to warn you, and they cancel the payment after 2 or 3 days. It takes too long time. PayPal does not have this problem, it is a big ease for us to get payment from PayPal. Is there anybody having this unhappy experience with 2CO? How to solve this problem? I want to use PayPal Pro to replace 2CO (better rate and interface and less hassels), but I have no time to check details yet.

[Corey Bryant]

Actually to my knowledge, I do not think that CSI processes for 2CO. They might have at one point, but more than likely they were moved to another First Data company (if they were using CSI).

If you are processing more than $1,000 a month and in the United States, a merchant account is usually a lot better. You get your money in about 48 hours after the sale instead of waiting one to two weeks. Your name appears on the CC statement instead of 2CO.

Do you due diligence. Having your own merchant account can be a lot cheaper usually averaging about 2.4% or so for the sale. At about $1,000, you are looking at about 4% of costs

-Corey

[iloveu]

2CO cancels the payment again, which I shipped the order already. I checked the payment yesterday, everything was fine, and I called the customer for correct shipping address, he was nice. But I got the payment cancellation toady. I can not make the business if I still stick with 2CO. I decide to use PayPal Payment Pro, I read the PDF manual, I can not find any real code snippet. Do you guys have one or just give me a link to the useful information, thanks.

[Corey Bryant]

Did you check under: Merchant Tools - Website Payments Pro -Technical Overview - Custom Integration - Software Development Kits. There is some code in there

-Corey

[BananaFish]

The only thing I don't like about the pro payments besides the poorly documented use of SOAP, is that you have to offer a link directly to paypal instead of just using it like a normal gateway. And it has to be on top of the payment page and such. As a "work around" I just take payments, use a Luhn check on the card and manually run them through VT. Will do this until I get a real gateway such as AuthorizeNet.

[lhazen]

I use linkpoint cart. It works great. You might consider getting a merchant account and cart with them. If you need a contact let me know.

[iloveu]

lhazen, thanks for your suggestion. Can you tell me which company is the best to apply for a merchant account? How about the rate? I use a customized cart.

[Corey Bryant]

As far as rates, you can get them for about 2.09% usually if you are in the United States and not selling high risk items.

The gateways - some might charge you extra for a transaction while the gateway (like LinkPoint) has no extra charges for a transaction

-Corey

[jwolthuis]

The Express Checkout-portion of PayPal Website Payments Pro has a couple of distinct advantages over traditional PayPal website integration.

1. It supports both AUTH and AUTH/CAPTURE, giving you the capability of caturing funds when you ship product.

2. The capture amount can be up to 115% of the amount authorized. Nice to use when the customer adds to an order after it's been placed.

3. The transaction is not finalized until after the customer returns to your site. This eliminates the problem of customers paying you, then abandoning the checkout process.

Also, the security certificate used for the Direct Payment API is the same as used with Express Checkout. You only have to install one set of certificates (production and sandbox).

Overall, I've been pleased with the performance of WPP on my site, although I switched over only a week ago. I suppose time will tell, but no problems thus far.

[lhazen]

Hi,

I'm sorry, I don't remember if you are in the US or Europe?

[jwolthuis]

If you're asking me, I'm in Michigan Wolverine country in the United States.

[sun818]

If you are comparing Merchant Account with Paypal Pro, I think merchant account is best at this current time. Paypal Pro does not offer enough flexibility with accepting or declining a transaction. Many transactions that authorize okay on AuthorizeNet will decline on Paypal Pro. Rough estimate I would say 10% reject more on Paypal Pro. I pay higher fees on a merchant account but the ability to accept additional legitimate transactions creates additional revenue and customer goodwill. If Paypal upgrades their system to tweak fraud settings, I will revisit them as a permanent option.

For now, I am taking advantage of their free Merchant Account (until October 31, 2005) and running my AmEx, Disocver, and non-qualified transactions (i.e. Gov't, Corporate) through it for the excellent processing rate.