Thinking of Switching from Paypal to Authorize.net

Hey guys,

I have always used PayPal, they are so easy, simple and kind of integrate right into my website for free (I do not pay monthly for the Website Payments Pro, just the basic one).

But on a recent transaction of $444, I got charged almost $18! That's like 4%!

I have been thinking of switching to Authorize.net for a while and think I found a good reseller: http://www.freeauthnet.com/. I am a little confused on what they will be charging me per month. I assume it will be both the statement fee ($9) and the gateway fee ($16)? Anyways, their commission is only 2.14% which is a lot better.

According to my calculations, if you sell more than $1344 per month (for the math geeks: x * [4%-2.14%] = $25), you am getting a better deal by switching to Authorize.net. Plus, it looks a lot more professional having the system integrated right into my site completely.

Does anyone have any advice of other Authorize.net resellers, other systems I can use, know if I should do this, or have any general advice on Authorize.net or other payment systems that are better?

 

I do recommend authnet over paypal, but you do need to consider that you will have downgrade charges with authnet and a merchant account. Paypal generally does not have any downgrade fees. 2.14% is their qualified rate but you will also have a mid and non qualified rate. These additional rates are for non-consumer cards, and situations where you don't use AVS and a number of other things. Paypal absorbs them into a single percentage, which is why you wont see them with Paypal.

Check these articles out. They should help a bit in your decision:
http://www.merchantaccountblog.com/archives/227
http://www.merchant-account-services.org/article/merchant-accounts-compared/

 

i just got a Authorize.net account threw Authorize.net them self but the site i was planing on using it for already has paypal working on it so now i don't know what to do .. i guess it's a good thing to hold on to if needed. i had to pay like 99 bucks to get setup and now we don't plan to using it right away.

what to do, what to do

 

Thanks for the information. +rep

I will review those articles.