[thelist] How do you extract money from people over the internet?
Maximillian Schwanekamp
lists at neptunewebworks.com
Tue Sep 6 12:06:07 CDT 2005
Anthony Ettinger wrote:
> I use PayPal as well. Easy way to accept credit cards
> without spending a dime.
AFAIK it's still not possible to accept credit cards via PayPal without
the customer having to use a payment form hosted by PayPal, with
PayPal's look and feel rather than your site's, which is a turn-off for
some customers (someone correct me if I'm wrong). Not everyone knows
what PayPal is, in spite of its relative ubiquity, and may even
associate it with phishing, since it has been such a common target.
You need not be a "large company" to have a regular merchant account to
accept credit cards directly. Get a business checking account if you
don't have one already. Then you can get a credit card merchant
account, which is much easier than some would have you believe, and is
more likely to scale well as your business grows. Search the list
archives for Joshua Olson's thread about merchant accounts a few months
ago - a lot of good info was posted by him and others then.
I personally recommend Practice Pay Solutions[0]. They're offering
Authorize.Net-based solutions, have very good customer service and are
strongly oriented toward independent professionals and microbusiness.
(Full disclosure: I did webwork for them in the past).
If you get a merchant account such as that offered by PPS, you will
probably need an SSL certificate. Those can range from reasonable to
exhorbitant. GoDaddy's SSL certs start at $30 [1], and are generally
adequate. GeoTrust certificates are commonly offered for $50-100 by
many hosting companies, inquire if yours does.
[0] http://www.practicepaysolutions.com/
[1] https://www.godaddy.com/gdshop/ssl/ssl.asp
--
Max Schwanekamp
http://www.neptunewebworks.com/
More information about the thelist
mailing list