What credit card clearing companies do you use?

and are you happy with them?

[jazzle]

Hi everyone,
simple question as above really - what clearing companies do you all use and are you happy with them?

am in the UK so opinions about services offered here will be most useful.

TIA, j

[BradleyT]

Authorize.net

Not sure if they're UK OK or not though.

[jazzle]

any others anyone?

[Corey Bryant]

Well authorizenet.com is not a credit card processor - it is an electronic payment gateway. It is mainly for United States merchants, but there are some MAPs (merchant account providers) that support that electronic payment gateway.

It depends on your volume, etc. Worldpay or Barclays would be two companies I would review.

-Corey

[madmac]

>> Well authorizenet.com is not a credit card processor

What the hell are you smoking?

[HRoth]

He's right--authorize.net is not a credit card processor. It's a payment gateway. The processor is between the gateway and the merchant account. My gateway is Authorize.net and credit card processor is Ipayment. You know, they gotta have all these layers so everyone gets to take a bite out of your income.

Is Ipayment any good? They seem pretty bad, but trying to change has not been a happy experience either.

[Corey Bryant]

>> Well authorizenet.com is not a credit card processor
What the hell are you smoking?

As was poitned out, they are an electronic payment gateway. A gateway connects your website to the transaction processor (a lot of times First Data) who then routes the transaction to the appropriate organization for approval. Once that is done, it is sent back to your website to let the consumer know if the transaction was approved or not.

Later that night, a batch is ran and money is moved from the issuing bank to the acquiring bank. The merchant account provider takes their percentage out and then the remainder of the money is moved to the merchant's bank.

(in a nutshell)

-Corey

[BradleyT]

Correction on my previous post. We use Wells Fargo and Authorize.net. I thought Authorize did the processing but they actually have a partnership with Wells Fargo and that's who our merchant account is with.

[HRoth]

How do you like Wells Fargo? I have heard bad things about them. Still, I applied to them couple years ago, but they turned me down because my products were right next door to products they didn't like.

[henry0]

My web dev biz supplies authorize.net
Here is the "map"
1)Merchant biz
2)Internet
3)Authorize.net (Gateway)
4)Merchant’s bank processor
5)Credit card interchange
6)Credit card issuer
7)Merchant bank account
8)Merchant’s bank

[madmac]

>> As was poitned out, they are an electronic payment gateway

That I know of, you cannot just "directly" sign up with authorize.net as a merchant. You have to go through a "reseller" to get your merchant account, who also offers authorize.net gateway access. Since most auth.net resellers offer only auth.net as the gateway, for practical purposes, it is NOT just a payment gateway, but is in fact a complete merchant solution.

[Corey Bryant]

That I know of, you cannot just "directly" sign up with authorize.net as a merchant. You have to go through a "reseller" to get your merchant account, who also offers authorize.net gateway access. Since most auth.net resellers offer only auth.net as the gateway, for practical purposes, it is NOT just a payment gateway, but is in fact a complete merchant solution.

Sorry I have to disagree. We get at least one merchant a week who has signed up with authorizenet.com thru a reseller and that reseller for reasons unknown, did not get them a merchant account.

They are not a complete merchant solution - that is not their business model. Just like LinkPoint / Verisign's Payflow - those are also just electronic payment gateways.

There are companies that will offer complete solutions, but authorizenet.com is not one of them

-Corey

[jazzle]

so what companies can provide a whole solution?
(available in UK)

[Corey Bryant]

so what companies can provide a whole solution?
(available in UK)

Check out Barclay's or possibly Worldpay.

-Corey

[shazer7]

I use PayQuake. My business is small and this works fine for me

[jazzle]

they're not in the UK are they?

[nonstop]

Who did you go with Jazzle?

[jazzle]

I haven't actually yet decided - currently I'd like to go with PayPal since it suits our simple product line (the one item at a time model works well), but my co-director is less keen.

We do already have a Barclays business account so it should be them really, but they seem to require a vast amount of information and, as a start up, we simply don't know the answers to all the questions.

[Corey Bryant]

If you have questions / concerns about opening the merchant account, contact the agent. Ask to sit down with him / her and go over everything. Afterall that is what they are there for

-Corey

[nonstop]

May I ask what kind of rate you got from Barclay's?

I looked at realexpayments but their fraud checks don't seem too good, only checking exp date, cvv and not the billing address.

[jazzle]

May I ask what kind of rate you got from Barclay's?

I can't really since I haven't set anything up yet, but am told that it will be between 2 and 5%.

[moose606]

I use icverify as gateway and nova processors as merchant account. This has worked well. The only issues are always a few chargebacks at the end of the month.

[jazzle]

our products are likely to be a few hundred pounds each, so chargebacks would be really not good for us.