Is there a possible way i can get a hold of one for free? Im trying to sell a few products on a site, but i cant because i dont have paypal or anything like that. Is there a site that will take care of all that for me?
Jestep, I am interested how do merchant accounts vary from country to country-where can I look for terms? I am from Europe and am very interested in merchant terms, fees etc.
Basically the US has an entire industry (ISO's / MSP's) built around providing credit card processing services. In most other countries, banks have complete control over the entire system. What this has done is create a really complicated interchange fee system in the US, but has made it cheaper overall to process, and businesses have hundreds of companies they can process through. I know that in Canada and some other countries, banks have complete control over their debit networks and debit encryption. These banks then charge huge monthly fees to rent a credit card terminal, or charge a huge fee to encrypt a terminal. In the US it costs about $20 to encrypt a terminal. In Canada it costs about $600. There's a bunch of other countries that are locked into this encryption monopoly. In many cases is the only factor that prevents an ISO industry from starting in other countries. Obviously the banks don't want to give up control. Why would they let someone pay $20 for something when they can force them to pay $600 and there's nothing anyone can do about it. So basically, if you're not in the US you usually have to go to a bank for credit card processing. If you are in the US, you can use a bank, but there are hundreds of companies who's entire business model is credit card processing services. In either situation banks are more expensive.
nope. you cant get it for free try worldpay, authorize.net, or maybe thrid party processors such as 2checkout and clickbank
You could check out crystalpayments, they are good and reliable offshore third party payment processor. Happy New Year !