Worldpay really still the best?

Or are their rates unjustifiably high...

[coburn]

Been with worldpay for some time now - but do they still offer the best deals for online Credit and Debit card payments?

Their anti-fraud unit is great, customer services sucks, and at about 4.4% for credit cards, could it be time to switch?

Have heard good things about authorize.net and firepay.

(We're a small UK training services company that take payment before delivery)

[RailMan]

remember their % rates only applies to credit cards - debit cards are a flat 50p - other companies charge % on credit and debit cards so worldpay is often cheaper - about half my transactions are by credit card, half by debit card, so the flat fee for debit cards makes a big difference

[coburn]

Our prices range from £1000 to £1900 range - so almost all pay using credit cards :-(

So who are the other options?

[Corey Bryant]

Being in the UK, you are more than like not eligible for the electronic payment gateway authorizenet.com. To use their services, you need a merchant account from a US provider. And most MAPs in the United States only support US based businesses. Some will support you if you have a US address, phone number and bank account. And your discount rate would probably be about 4%.

You might check out protx.com and see what MAPs they are compliant with. Depending on your volume, you might be better off with them

-Corey

[coburn]

Thx Corey! Great find - protx have a comparison chart that shows you the best provider for your level of charge.

Turns out secpay are also highly competitive.

So - aside from money, how do worldpay, protx and secpay compare?

[Corey Bryant]

Well I am not familiar too much with worldpay & secpay, but protx is an electronic payment gateway I believe and you would still need a merchant account provider (MAP) to complete the wheel

-Corey

[RailMan]

protx / secpay / securetrading and others are gateways only - they all require you to have a merchant account with your bank
you can compare them directly with the worldpay bankdirect system, which requires a merchant account from your bank.
worldpay bankdirect is 1.6% / 25p
(note that the worldpay system most people talk about is the worlddirect system, which is 4.5% / 50p, so make sure you do the right comparison)
securetrading is 1.5%, but don't know if thats credit and debit cards (need to check all the others properly next week!)

protx have an uptime / downtime monitor on their website - 99.5% uptime on their front end web services ..........

[bekyed]

Hi,

We use protx and secpay and they are equally as good as each other.
The customer service is good too.

Bek.

[chodges84]

I use Worldpay. I like them. They are well recognised and highly respected. i think that customers trust them, so you may find more conversions than with some one else.

A customer once e-mailed me to say that he uses Protx with a Lloyds cardnet Merchant Account, and found it to be cheaper. I looked into on the Protx website, but they compare their services with Worldpays 'Worlddirect' service, which most people use and includes your own merchant account with them and has higher fees.

I never really got any further than that, but I take it that a merchant account provider will still charge you per transaction, regardless of the gateway you use, so don't take Protx's website as the gospel truth.