Re: Online payment options......

Asutralia is in the coverage of IKobo. You can visit http://www.ikobo.com/view_country_php.html

 

I for one wouldn't recommend PayPal for an online store. I mean it may work once you’re from USA or Canada, but once you go into Europe working with paypal won't be such a pleasant experience. I think if you really want a good business you have to go globally and use a merchant account provider with real coverage like 2checkout or ikobo. If fees are what matters most then ikobo has some of the lowest ones I think.
Basically I agree with everything vinyl said.

 

Theres nothing to agree or dissagree - things I said are facts. All over the world is main keyword in this discussion and since PayPal doesn't cover all the world, actually they cover a VERY small portion of it, I wouldnt recommend them to anybody! Why is compar doing that - probably because hes quite happy with his limited portion. Maybe he will change his mind when he starts loosing cash or receiving complains about the PayPals limited processing service, from people who arent in PayPals famous accepted list of countries.

Take eBay for instance - doing PayPal transaction only will just harm them - there are so many people who whould join the auctions (or should I say that their members might be more than doubled, because PayPal doesnt even cover half of the world) if only they didnt stick so much to it. I know many people who must contact their friends and family from foreign countries just in order to buy/sell something there. That probably has nothing to do with ya USA/CA guys, but be sure that if you choose PayPal, you will more than certain come in situation that you will loose customer because of its limits. One, two, ten, hundreds of them from Kazahstan, China, Malta, Russia, Iraq... does it really matters?

 

The sad part is indeed as you said that people are clinging to paypal with their teeth. They don't seem to care if there are better options out there, they only know paypal. I admit, it's not a bad service, although the people who got their accounts emptied or frozen wouldn't say the same thing. True, some of them did this to themselves, but still, security at paypal leaves a lot to be desired. Paypal's biggest break was the fact that they got under eBay's wing and since so many people use eBay, well you do the math.
Internet coverage keeps expanding and since paypal isn't willing to meet the world's (W O R L D) needs someone else may take their place. The good thing there's been a lot of competition appearing lately but people are still reluctant to give up their paypal accounts or even use something else as an alternative. It's something sad to see, especially for those of us who couldn't use paypal even if we wanted to.

 

Vicious,

Welcome back. I was just asking about you on another thread yesterday. Where have you been?

But I have to say that I have problems with the quote above. When did lack of knowledge ever stop you from jumping in before

I see you arm is still bleeding. Can't you fix that? We could take up a collection to pay your medical bills, or you could move to Canada where thing like that are taken care of by our "socialist" government

 

I am sure there are many people like you two who are impressed by paypal - yet, there are many of us who arent. Both of us have our arguments - you said its easy to pay thru it & to recieve worldwide payments - I say I never saw any site offering me to pay thru paypal, without having an account - theres always login/register account procedure which must be completed in order to execute payments. Is it webmasters or paypals fault? I dont care, as long as "PayPal is currently available in 38 countries worldwide" statements stays in their FAQ, they cannot be taken as worldwide merchant account. It might not affect you, because you managed to make it worldwide for selling, but thats only one site and only one aspect of merchant accounts - what about sellers? As this is thread should help people decide what merchant account they should register, so assuming that they are sellers, just tell me how will they get their paypal merchant account when they are not allowed to do so? How can you promote & glorify that, when its obviously a limit which stands as a wall between 38 countries & rest of the world?

 

What are the fees for using paypal? Do they charge anything to the buyer or seller for each transaction?

 

apart from this payment gateway does this and that there is a thing called customer choice and not to forget investment.

PP is easy clean fast and requires no upfront investment. A growing populus has used it at ebay or amazon or any of the other zilon stores.
But hey it requires no upfront, has a tiered fee structure and works.
Europe still requires registration but again lot's of people already have an account. So give it to them.

Once established I would always advise to add a mainstream gateway which has a name and recognition value and allows you to co brand the payment pages.

The customer is not interested in what is behind the scene, they want to pay hassle free and secure. If they get a choice its even better.

From a small site standpoint bringing on PP adds some credebility and allows "big boys payment" at no initial investment. Once up and running a high recognition gateway with broad apeal to users would always be my next choice, regardless of their fee structure, but this usually requires a cash payment.

If the business growth further a more "localised" gateway for either home or emerging regions is a potential next step.

Below site ships world-wide has been active for about 6 month now does 5 digit monthly turnover

cheque 5% (mainly UK)
PP 32% (mainly UK US CA D)
WP 63%
shipping
UK 35%
US 30%
CA 10%
other 25%

Probably what I'm trying to write is that PP has it's merrit and there may well be "localised" systems that allow an easy fast and "cheap" start. It very much depends on geo location and geo targeting BUT if at all possible give the customer a bit of choice they as well as we all have our litle preferences.....

M

PS I'm not a friend of integrating own payment gateways as I've yet to see a really secure installation.

 

Lately we have been using http://www.solarbilling.com and found them to be extremely fast in the customer service department and decently efficient with processing needs. Ryan has helped us with several issues we had in a very professional manner.

 

one note PayPal US works without opening account
PayPal Europe (via UK) does not yet have this option (don't ask....)
(sitting in UK they assume that I do wish to use UK services given no choice in that matter.......

Hey great to hear from you VS

S long
M

 

I was browsing the paypal UK web site and according to the site you don't need an account to send money in UK either

http://www.paypal.com/uk/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/mer/WAX_acquisit_landing-outside

It doesn't say anything about limitations in Europe.

 

You are right to an extend, just checked and

.....The streamlined new checkout process applies to the following Website Payments types: Buy Now Buttons, Donations, and PayPal Shopping Basket, as well as Request Money......

Does not work when one doesn't use buy now or their basket.......

this still requires membership and the process is a bit weird......

But a valid point I may have to wrigle my shopping basket into a buy now or so...... something to check out soon as I need their feed back routines to trigger shipment of the order....

Whereas WP just takes the card ....
cheers
M
PS If you try buying below and use PP you'll see

 

We started out using the Worldpay bureau service as we could not get a merchant account. They are reliable but very expensive and hold onto your money for ages ( two months in our case). After we had a three month trading history we got a merchant account and moved our creditcard processing to Protx. They are a fraction of the cost of Worldpay and you get the money in three days

 

Hi welcome (if I haven't already).

it's a nice tip, although do they provide the backoffice functions like sending back payment status - basket info etc? As I need that to for the order automation...

Cheers
M

 

Hi

Yes they offer all the back office services that Worldpay do (with a better user interface in my opinion). They also have some nice anti fraud services with a partner company called the 3rd man which which was useful for us.

All in all we were very pleased with them because they offered a similar service to Worldpay but with reduced costs and improved cashflow. In the UK they have been very successful with SMEs

 

thanks had another look and yes looks usefull as you said may well concider when WP is up for renewal (down to two weeks and nice tiered fee structure so I can't complain too much)
M