I am introducing my product to Australia and would like to know if there are any other reliable alternatives to PayPal in terms of accepting credit/debit card payments. I find that the fees PayPal is charging is quite substantial and the exchange rate is pretty bad despite the advantage of not paying an annual fee.
I live in Perth, Western Australia and to my knowledge there aren't any alternatives. But don't just take my opinion, look in to it on Google. We do have a bank payment method called BPAY. Not sure if that is any help.
BPAY appears to be more of a bill payment service. I am looking more at something like eWAY but preferably with lower fees.
I'm having many e-Commerce website clients from Australia and most of them are using eWay as a payment processor to get the payments from Credit card so you can check that out. http://www.eway.com.au/ Hope it helps...
eWay, I've never heard of it. Yea i though BPAY might be for bills lol. Just Google eWay alternative and if you don't get any valuable results, then it's probably your only option besides paypal.
Will you be registering a business down here, or you plan on selling to Australian customers directly from Singapore? If you are going to be selling from Singapore, why not look into a merchant account with your local bank? They are probably cheaper than PayPal, and would give your customers a choice. If you are going to set up a business here the only competitor to PayPal is Paymate (3times lower fraud rates than paypal, but higher fees). Or you can apply for a merchant account with one of the banks, and get a third party payment gateway (such as eway - for safety reasons i personally never recommend real time payment gateways, instead i prefer manual payment gateways - have a look at e-path.com.au). If you are going to operate from Australia, it is also worth considering giving your customers an option of paying through direct deposit (online banking) and BPay (while it is mainly used for paying bills, it is also used for online purchases - it costs very little and funds are deposited to your bank account the same day).
Your advice basically covers all my questions. I think I will explore the option of a local merchant account with a local bank for now.