Which on-line payment processing company are you using?

Vincent65536

Hello everyone.

I wonder if I could get any advise from fellow entrepreneurs. In our business we take part of our payments on-line through our website (this is constantly growing) and last year it was around 100k (approx 700 operations). Currently we use paypal as it is easy to use, however:

- the cost is huge (approx 4k in fees last year)
- we had couple of cases where customers seeing paypal on their bank statement initiated chargeback (as they do not have paypal) - paypal despite order proof, proof of delivery and e-mail where customer thanks us for service charged our account - after our contact with customers they were trying to stop it but with no luck. In all cases they paid us by cheque but we are left covering 15 euro fee per claim
- we are getting more business from UK therefore we are paying big spreads through paypal and we loose on exchange.

Would anyone advise a good, reliable company that will serve payments (over the phone and through website) from Ireland and UK and that is reasonably priced at the same time.

I'm looking at realex payments, sage pay and stripe - any opinions?

Many thanks.

Lucky2Day

I've used Realex and Stripe and would recommend Stripe. It is easy to setup, no monthly fees, has good fraud protection. It is also easy to setup bank accounts in different currencies to withdraw money to (the transfers are by default a week after the money has been received) and also to setup multiple Stripe accounts if you have multiple websites.

mneylon

Vincent65536 wrote: »

I'm looking at realex payments, sage pay and stripe - any opinions?

Many thanks.

We've been using Realex for years and it works very well for us.

The key thing in terms of reducing price is getting your own merchant account. You'd need to talk to your bank about that.

Dades

If you currently don't have to worry about PCI compliance, make sure that you don't get stuck with it.

jocefella

<SNIP>

Mod: No advertising or business promotion allowed.

meijin

https://www.braintreepayments.com/en-ie/braintree-pricing

vs.

https://stripe.com/ie/pricing

stripe seems cheaper? and no fees for refunded transactions

no mention of VAT on braintree page... is it included or not?

foreignobserver

I meant to ask for alternatives to PayPal when I saw this thread. Very helpful. Thanks @Lucky2Day and @Blacknight for the tips - I'll check Stripe and Realex now. Are there any other companies worth mentioning? (PayPal is not)

jocefella wrote: »

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Not to rain on your parade John, but I have had the PayPal button embedded on the website for years and have just discovered that credit card payments had been quietly removed! So my would-be clients are now forced to set up a PayPal account. To make things worse, when you get to the payment page there is not a mention of an option to pay with a credit card.

I have just rung the support and was told that (internally) "nobody was told about this change at PayPal" either ... what a mess!

Now if I want my customers to be able to pay with a credit card I have to sign up for a premium service that comes with a fixed monthly charge as well as the commission per transaction (3.4% + 35 cents).

But ... I was told this service was not even available in Ireland!

To sum up:

1. PayPal quietly removed the cc feature
2. Users or even customer reps who deal with users were not informed
3. The premium feature that allows accepting cc payments is being imposed
4. The premium feature is not available in Ireland

Way to go PayPal, way to go...

EDIT: See the screenshot - this is what my customers now get when they click the Pay button.

jocefella

<SNIP>

Vincent65536

Thank you all for input. I will do little bit more research myself but it looks like a switch to stripe.

John thank you for your insight - I will most likely go ahead (subject to research) with the stripe - paypal - I'm very disappointed with:
- paypal is very happy to penalise me for genuine transactions - I'm not having that!
- cost is massive - most expensive on the market - and while Braintree seems to charge less, still not as competitive as stripe.

Can I ask if is anyone is using STRIPE for payments from UK? How does website integration looks? What do customers see on their statements? (My problem with paypal is that they see Paypal on their statement and I can understand that they think that the operation is a fraud... when they don't have paypal themselves).

Thanks again and I hope more people can benefit from this thread.

jocefella

No Problem at all James ........Best of luck with the site !

digimarkeire

I've been using PayPal for a while and don't have any problems... except for the customer service.

drunkmonkey

Chaps can I ask are any of you doing retail transactions with cards, i'm getting fleeced by AIB and need to move.

jimmii

drunkmonkey wrote: »

Chaps can I ask are any of you doing retail transactions with cards, i'm getting fleeced by AIB and need to move.

Lots of us are naturally! How much are you paying now and roughly how much card are you processing a month? Do you need a solution to just use on site or do you need one that you can take off site? The banks are all pretty expensive definitely worth looking elsewhere alright.

foreignobserver

drunkmonkey wrote: »

Chaps can I ask are any of you doing retail transactions with cards, i'm getting fleeced by AIB and need to move.

I use SumUp. They charge 2% commission, but there are no monthly fees. Might not suit a busy environment as you get to use your own smartphone as a terminal (they provide a card reader for around 40 euro, but the pin has to be keyed in on the smartphone and sent over Bluetooth to the reader). Having said that they also provide a fully fledged solution with a cash register and a terminal that might suit better - dunno how much they charge, but look them up. Overall I am very happy with SumUp. We mostly get paid by bank transfers and might not get any credit card payments for a week or two, so the lack of fixed monthly charges is a priority. Outstanding customer support as well.

digimarkeire wrote: »

I've been using PayPal for a while and don't have any problems... except for the customer service.

You might want to check how your PayPal button works now - it is impossible to pay with a credit card over PayPal in Ireland. Customer service is great at fobbing you off and then sending you a survey to find out how you feel about it.

MOH

foreignobserver wrote: »

You might want to check how your PayPal button works now - it is impossible to pay with a credit card over PayPal in Ireland. Customer service is great at fobbing you off and then sending you a survey to find out how you feel about it.

That's incredibly bad. When did that change?

BrokenArrows

Is the problem with paypal just Ireland?
Im based in the UK and use paypal, the checkout still works for me from the UK but i have noticed a slight drop in international sales. Wonder if its other countries too.

jocefella

<snip>

Mod: You were warned before..

meijin

jocefella wrote: »

I can have a look at that for you if you want

:rolleyes:

just tell us why payments by card are blocked in Ireland

someone got a target to increase PayPal sign-ups, and decided to force everyone to use it without notice? :rolleyes:

sat matt

I recall reading once that Paypal allows only 5 card payments against an email address before that person is forced to sign up. Added to that, I found you could never be guaranteed that the option would appear for customers anyway... too many variables and wishy washy rules. I helped some clients with Paypal integration in the past but swore never again. Last experience involved having to get Paypal support to setup a fake UK personal account as they wouldn't allow a NI bank account to be added to the Irish business Paypal account. This then meant getting hit twice for fees to withdraw GBP transactions into the NI bank account, despite support promising they wouldn't be charged for transfers between the two accounts

I'm on the lookout for something better to plugin to WooCommerce shops and perhaps allow a virtual terminal for MOTO transactions also. I've played with Stripe on the WooCommerce end and I like it. I need to dig a little to learn how they handle multi-currency and what virtual terminal options might be available.

The other provider I'm sussing out is SagePay. They seem to offer the full package - WC integration, plus virtual and hardware terminals and pricing that's a little easier to understand but their UK based sales team leaves alot to be desired. They seem to just offload Irish customers to Elavon and they cannot answer many questions themselves

martco

Stripe for the website, Vend Register for the shop till (runs on ipads, its the best epos by a mile in my context, great value) & Sumup for the card payments (even though its mpos terminal I use it happily perched up beside the Vend till in the shop)

regarding Sumup, I run it off the shop broadband and it even integrates to the Vend register, its the best low cost credit card option I think out there but I want to draw attention to one flaw, beware if you are going with them
they seem to be having major difficulty at present in handling payments for BOI issued cards on their latest contactless payment device....I've actually had to revert to an older model of the device which is unfortunately chip+pin only.
It's not the device, I've had a couple of replacements both fail. They claim to have been trying to resolve the problem but it's been for months now, I suspect the problem is something much deeper. Big shame as most of my customers want to tap and go (coffeeshop scenario) and I like what they are trying to do as a concept but it's a shame as now I can't even get into taking payments with Apple pay or Android something several customers have already wanted to do, I'm hoping iZettle arrives in Ireland sometime in the future.

martco

just an update to my own scenario....3 developments within the last month, fair play to sumup:

1. they have fixed the current EMV capable card reader so now I'm taking payments from any card presented so far without a glitch
2. they seem to have stabilised integration with my Vend Register app, so now my till is working perfectly at the shop
3. the other thing is they have provided me with access to a feature called Virtual Terminal which allows me to take card payments over the phone via the sumup.me webend

from reading the documentation it also looks like they have a published API that I could use to integrate website payments to. I'm technical (not a developer) however I'm going to have a go at making it work to take online payments. will post an update if I manage to make it work

sat matt

martco wrote: »

just an update to my own scenario....3 developments within the last month, fair play to sumup:

1. they have fixed the current EMV capable card reader so now I'm taking payments from any card presented so far without a glitch
2. they seem to have stabilised integration with my Vend Register app, so now my till is working perfectly at the shop
3. the other thing is they have provided me with access to a feature called Virtual Terminal which allows me to take card payments over the phone via the sumup.me webend

from reading the documentation it also looks like they have a published API that I could use to integrate website payments to. I'm technical (not a developer) however I'm going to have a go at making it work to take online payments. will post an update if I manage to make it work

Can you take debit card payments through their virtual terminal? Their support documents state credit card only

martco

good question
yep it does seem to work despite the blurb
I've traced back the payments which went to settlement/payment as per normal...AIB Visa Debit at least, I've not seen any others yet & unfortunately neither I or any staffers have any of the other types to test
will report if I catch anything

thestartup

Stripe is the best payments options so far I used if you want to go international, really look for what is mostly used in that specific country. Paypal is the most trusted but a lot of people have had either their account limited, froze etc not to scare you but it does happen