[thelist] How do you extract money from people over the internet?

[Maximillian Schwanekamp]

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/