I have a customer or two that wants to pay by credit card once in a while. Typical credit card merchants charge a $25 monthly minimum, yet I don't use the service very often, but I'd like the ability to take credit cards. I believe Paypal needs the customer to enter his info himself. I'm looking for a legitimate service where I can process my customers' CC once in a while without any monthly fees. Any suggestions?
Take a look at Google Checkout, your customers will be given the chance to enter credit card numbers during the payment process. That if you're based in the US or UK as a seller to qualify for opening a merchant account.
Take a look at SolidTrust Pay. They provide Merchants with credit card services and if your business is accepted, a Virtual Terminal allowing you to manually enter your customer's credit card information in order to charge them for your product or service. There are no monthly minimums or maximums imposed on merchants or any reserves held.
If you have PayPal, you can subscribe to their gateway service of which also includes direct acceptance (you enter the credit card). The issue is that this will incur a monthly cost and (if I recall correctly) a setup fee. If your transaction volume is that low, it may make more sense to use an alternative payment method. Otherwise, your next best bet would be to get an actual merchant account and associated gateway if the merchant account doesn't include a gateway. In our case, we use Elevon through Costco and connect to that account via Authorize.net. Once again, costs need to be considered as the typical minimum monthly base cost is around $15.00. In our case, we transact quite a bit, so that becomes negligible. -Bing
Paypals gateway service is $30 a month, 3% per card entered, and not to mention they hold 1/3 of each transaction for 90 days in case you receive a chargeback. My company has an option to do a $95 setup fee instead of the $25 monthly min. which makes more sense for businesses like yours.
Hi, Just wondering why you want to be able to enter the credit card information yourself and not have your customers do it? Entering the information yourself increases the risk of chargeback, and also puts your customers secure financial information at greater risk. The purpose of many 3rd party payment processors is to increase the security of transactions made online, and to allow people to make purchases without divulging their credit card information. My suggestion would be to find a reliable 3rd party Payment Processor who can process a few transactions /month for you, and it will keep both you & your clients safe. Thanks, ChriZ Online Community Support AlertPay.com