Anyone experienced in online trading account setup?

lanod2407

I'm setting up an internet-based business and one of the requirements is an Internet Merchant Account.

Some companies offer a full turn-key solution, providing the interface with the customer where card details are taken and the transaction is processed. They also provide the Internet Merchant Account (IMA) - where the funds are stored on your behalf. On a periodic basis these funds are transferred to your own ban account.

Others offer part of the process - e.g. the front end card processing function, with your own bank then providing the IMA. One of the tricks appears to be that risk is shared between you and the bank regarding credit card transactions - and the banks want to cover themselves from that risk.

Anyone got experience? I've applied to a "one stop shop" provider who processed me all the way to the end and then came back the day we were to start and said that the application was accepted and approved and all I had to do was accept a "reserve" of almost €10k to cover their risk - i.e. the first €10k of trading receipts would remain in their account until they were happy to reduce the reserve.

So, as hard as it is to fund major development and business start-up costs, these guys come up with a way of pocketing the first several months of revenue for an unspecified period .......... really making covering initial costs and paying the VAT man quite easy!!!:mad:

Somewhat annoyed at the timing of the request I'm trying to find out what others have experienced in this field? Anyone??

Dabko

Ianod

My experience with merchant accounts is they are all a bunch of thieving consortium's! The trick is to figure who's gonna rob you the least.

I currently use elavon as my merchant account provider. The payment processing company are paypoint (formely secpay).

Elavon charge a min monthly fee of between 20 and 30 euro, with a % then due on all sales - our company pay 2.1% on personal credit cards, 2.8% on Business credit cards and 0.27cents (i think) per laser card transaction.

Paypoint charge a set monthly fee of between 12 and 20 euro, depending on the amount of transactions you are expecting to have through your site. I found paypoint to be much cheaper than any Irish credit card processors. Whilst most English companies are even cheaper than paypoint, most do NOT process laser cards!

The process begins with you applying (talk with your bank) for a merchant bank account. If you do use elavon, make sure you are very specific that all you need is an internet merchant account, not a terminal account. Terminal account is fine if you own a physical shop with people needing credit card processing all day everyday, however, they find ways to charge you stupid amounts for this, that and the other.

Once you have all your merchant a/c details, find a payment processing provider (paypoint, realex etc…). These are the guys who provide a secure payment gateway for your website credit card processing. This saves you having to fork out tens of thousands on start up with a secure as hell website payment processor.

When a customer buys something on your site, once they confirm the shopping cart content and other options such as shipping, they are then redirected to a very secure enter credit card details page (paypoint). After 24 hours this money is transferred to your merchant bank ac (elavon), which in turn deposits the funds, in full, into your current business account. The whole process takes approx 3-4 working days. You also have the manual transaction facility with paypoint so if a customer calls you and wants to place an order, you can login to the paypoint website, enter in their credit card details and process the payment there and then. ( Never say no to someone wanting to give you money!)

And that’s it then, you build your website with suitable shopping cart facilities and integrate the payment gateway(s). I have currently built 2 shopping websites, with knowledge in paypal, paypoint and worldpay processing.

I hope all that might be of some help to you. I have a graphic/web design company that can offer you all the help you will need. If you need any more advice or would like to see a project we are currently finishing off for a customer, send me a pm anytime.

Best of luck with it.

R3al

You may find the page on our own site below useful as it describes some of the terms and a variety of e-commerce options open to you

http://www.iccmhosting.com/pages/commerce.php

TheWaterboy

Hi lanod,

I staretd off with Paypal and moved then to Worldpay mainly due to the fact that they offer Laser card payments which alot of customers now use. As Worldpay are both the payment provider and merchant bank it wasnt that difficult to setup and I just provided them with bank details etc. At the moment they dont keep a reserve amount from me (but at the start they did), however from the date Im paid for a product I dont get the money for 4 weeks into my bank account. This is tough from a cash control point of view.

The other alternative, which seems what you want to do, is to get a merchant account from your bank and then use someone like Realex to process your payment. There is a huge amount of paperwork etc. with this and it can take a while to sort out as banks can be very picky. Im currently working on a site for a friend and 4 months later they are still waiting on their merchant account. Long term this is probably the best solution though as you will have the money in your account within 3-4 days.

Personally if I were you, Id start with Paypal to process payments and take it from there. Your site can be built to implement the payment process fairly seemlessly. If the site takes off then you can mover forward and get a merchant account and another payment processor. To make money you got to start having sales so you dont want to spend weeks waiting on a merchant account when you can just accept payments with Paypal.

Mickk

I don't know how many times now I have complained about elavon but they are an absolute disgrace. They were instructed by bank of ireland to change their name from bank of ireland credit card services last year because they aren't actually owned by bank of ireland. In a similar way ulster bank merchant services aren't exclusive to ulster bank accounts (don't know who owns them), I use them with my boi business account and found them very straight forward to deal with, the way it should be when you are trying to give a company business. My bank manager had problems with elavon so many times he now sends all his customers to ulster bank merchant services!

Tony

Mickk I'm having the similar problems with Elavon. May i ask how long it takes for money to appear in your bank account? I'm currently using realex, elavon and bank of Ireland and money usually appears around 7pm the following day.