Accepting credit cards online, in europe

[madmatt69]

Hey everyone,

Can anyone inform me as to what the process is to accept credit cards (Visa, MasterCard, Amex, etc) on a website based in Europe?

I'm somewhat familiar with how it works in North America, but not sure at all if it works the same way in Europe.

Basically I need an e-commerce in europe for dummies book :)

The site in question would be travel related, and accept things like hotel bookings. Any help on where to start finding out how to setup a payment system would be a huge help!

[Leosghost]

Ask your bank ..merchant account or whatever it's called where you are?..or look at worldpay ..or others

[Miklo]

There are lots of processors in Europe. If you are from Europe, they can probably set you up directly with an acquiring bank for the acceptance of Visa/MasterCard. Banks usually only work with processors in Europe and not directly with the webshop. Have a look at MultiCards, WorldPay, Metacharge, Protx, Ogone or Chronopay. These are the most well known processors in Europe.

[etechsupport]

I hope worldpay or Chronopay might be good solution for Europe. If you have an operational company in the
EU, though I don't know much about worldpay and other processor as above but chronopay can offer you a 3rd party solution as well as an own merchant account. Also, they can offer a virtual terminal at no extra costs. With their 3rd party solution there are no monthly fees and no set up fees.

[Rollo]

Use Paypal Website Payments Pro, they do Euros without a problem and offer pretty much everything anyone else does.

[jwolthuis]

Are you sure about this? I thought PayPal's multi-currency support was limited to PayPal payments.

From the PayPal Website Payments Pro Integration Guide: "The only valid currency code for Direct
Payments at this time is USD."

[Rollo]

Yes, they accept U.S. Dollars, Canadian Dollars, Euros, Pounds Sterling, Yen, and Australian Dollars, though not the dozens of options that paypal account holders can choose.

I think you'd need to register as a U.S. business though, as it looks like it's still not available to European businesses.

[etechsupport]

In fact paypal have so many bad press, though it is still reliable,but as the original thread starter is looking for good solution in Europe, I think he should choose a payment processor based in Europe.

[madmatt69]

Thanks for all the replies. Yes, I think paypal isn't an option for this project, but we'll definitely check out the other ones, and any others you suggest.

Thanks!

[Angelis]

HSBC, Barclays and Natwest all have payment processing systems although they can be more expensive to setup, HSBC I know cant be branded as well, it has their name written all over it but it works brilliantly.

Another one you can try is streamline, just do a search for X merchant account in Google and you will find them all...