Choosing a merchant account

There are thousands... how to decide?

[zomega42]

I have been using Paypal to process transactions up until now, but I need to be able to accept credit cards on my own site. My understanding is that this means I need a merchant account. But I'm at a total loss on the details.... so a few questions:
What else do I need to get? All I need is to let people purchase products, a one-time fee (no subscriptions, digital content, or anything fancy like that).

I went to Authorize .net and they have loads of resellers, but how am I supposed to choose one? Are they different?

Do I get the merchant account and payment processing service all at once, or should I do them separately?

Where can I found out which gateways/processing systems are legitimate and the most popular?

Sorry I'm a total newbie to ecommerce, previous sites were just AdSense which made things easy.

[digitalv]

Call Wells Fargo and let them handle everything. They'll set you up with a merchant account and take care of setting up the Authorize.Net gateway for you as well. Plus since they're a real bank you're cutting out the middle-man who keeps a few percentage points for themselves.

[webtress]

Yes Wells Fargo is good and reliable. If your on a tight budget 2checkout.

[mgm_03]

Before you think about which to choose, you owe it to yourself to read, read, read, anything about e-commerce. Even if you are selling 1 widget.

Why? Because it will help you sleep knowing you did your homework and not just taking the advice of people on this board. There is great advice to be given here but it will be more valuable when it makes sense to you. Keep visiting this forum and read the topics/threads, go to your favorite bookstore and get a book on e-commerce (they're more prevalent now), do Google searches for tutorials. It's overwhelming in the begginning and you just want someone to tell you "do this" but that's really not wise.

There is much to learn and no shortcuts to learning it. I can say that my initial experience with 2CO (2checkout) was negative but now you have two opposing data ponts ...not terribly helpful.

I am still getting my arounds it all but I'm glad to have put the hours in.

[zomega42]

Does 2checkout do real merchant processing, or is it just like Paypal? At this point I'm looking to take credit card orders without forcing the customers to leave the site.

Does wells fargo have competitive rates? Since they're a real bank I'm guessing their setup fees are higher, but does this translate to a better discount rate, etc?

Thanks for all the tips

[digitalv]

Jeeze doesn't anyone negotiate anymore? I've never paid a setup fee for anything - setup fees are for lazy people who don't call and haggle. I'm with Wells Fargo now, figure it out :)