canadian-friendly credit card processors

[jake66]

i'm looking to offer an alternative to paypal for customers that wish to use their credit card.

the best deals i've seen so far were restricted to u.s. residents only

what are the requirements for a small canadian business?
i accept and process orders from customers all over the world; excluding a few of the high-risk countries we're all familiar with

- what type of bank account is required? anything special?

- who has to offer their credit info? the business owner or the site administrator? (the one that would be processing the orders)

- do you need a terminal to punch the numbers in?

i already have a full SSL for my site.

[Raymond]

Maybe you can try contacting your bank to acquire a real merchant account. It is relatively easy to setup one provided that you have a good credit standing.

I have a few friends who are running ecommerce websites with merchant accounts from Royal bank.

[Corey Bryant]

If you are based in Canada, check out PSI Gate / Beanstream

-Corey

[sharbel]

Both PSIGate and Beanstream are good. I personally use PSIgate and have never had a problem with them.

[webtress]

Look into the suggestions mentioned

who has to offer their credit info? the business owner or the site administrator? (the one that would be processing the orders)

- do you need a terminal to punch the numbers in?

1. The site owner who will be receiving the funds should be the one giving credit info.
2. You do not need a terminal to process cards over the internet. I assume you do have a shopping cart and not just using paypal buttons on html pages?

[hotwheel]

To customers of our ecommerce software we recommend e-xact quite often - Canadian and American.

[fiu88]

moneris...

psi gate looks good..but they hold your money for 15 days!

[LessZoa]

As an American based business, we use E-xact... and our purchasers are worldwide. We've never had any issues with E-xact, and they tell us when they have service issues - they are very pro-active in the monitoring.

Also, we prefer them to our own bank for E-xact insures all transactions. Something our bank won't do.

[lgn1]

We use moneris (Royal Bank / Bank of Montreal) also. Rates are 2.3% plus 18 cents a tranaction. This will drop to 2% after a year or so, if you have a low chargeback rate. They also throw in a virtual terminal, so you don't need a physical terminal for those non-web transactions.

They have a high signup cost ($450) but you can beat them down a hundred bucks or more. (ie don't to excited about the first price they offer you)

You need to sell a physical product (they don't deal with subscription services) and you must have good credit.