Accepting Sterling Payments and UK Debit Cards on Irish Site? Possible? Suggestions?

blobert

Hello,

I started another thread about taking UK debit cards, but having spoken to my bank and various payment providers my problems appear greater that first thought. In fact despite many calls to my bank and different payment providers I'm incredibly frustrated that I cannot seem to accomplish what should be quite straightforward.

I am starting an online store, there is only 1 product on sale at a time, it sells for €10 + €2 delivery to Irish customers.

In order to appeal to UK customers (who are likely to prove a much bigger market) I would like the site to allow them to purchase the same item in Sterling for £8 + £2 delivery. I have the site set up so it detects IP addresses and serves UK customers the Sterling version, for everyone else the Euro version. I'm hoping to basically make it appear to be a UK site for UK customers, they can pay in Sterling, their items will be sent via Royal Mail (I'll be dispatching from Northern Ireland) so they will basically think they are dealing with a UK company.

I would like offer a wide range of payment options: for Irish customers Credit and Laser, for UK customers Credit, Maestro, Switch Solo. I'd like to offer PayPal also.

I would have thought that the above set up was achievable but it is turning out to be impossible, hence my coming on here to seek advice.

I'm using Ulster Bank for my merchant account. Initially I set up with SagePay, but they are not able to process Laser cards so that is not an option. If I switch to another merchant bank I could process laser cards through them but they did not have any suggestions on the sterling issue.

I spoke to Realex, they can process all the card types and theoretically sterling payments but say I need to contact my bank to discuss taking sterling payments.

Ulster Bank said I could set up a UK merchant account and UK bank account, however to do so I believe you need a UK address. I could potentially use a virtual UK address for this, but I doubt the bank would be happy with this.

PayPal may offer the ability to take £ payments and they do allow UK users to use Debit Cards but I would like to be able to take UK cards directly, lot of users don't like PayPal.

Another option would be some kind of currency conversion, UK users could be charged the exact amount (in Euro) that the £10 total would be equal to on that day. But that does not seem to be the way it works. According to Realex you would still be offering the Euro price and showing them the Sterling equivalent.

Similarly converting the price from Euro to Sterling on the site is not an option, the price needs to be set at £8/€10 if some days its £7.76 and the next its £8.03 its not going to work, I need the price to be same every day.

I've run out of ideas of how I can go about achieving my aim. I'm struggling to think of any online Irish companies that take Sterling payments other than big guys like Ryanair, who would be able to get UK merchant accounts easily. I'm sure other people must have tried to do the same thing before so it must be do-able.

I'd really appreciate any advice on this. I don't want to have to compromise or only offer Euro payments, but at the moment its looking unavoidable:(

Thanks in advance