ESD - how sell software online? - which Merchant Account?

Have you considered setting up a web site then just using using Pay Pal? The fees are low and accepts international payments from 38 countries.

See:

http://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/sell/index-outside

I know PayPal, but I don't want it.

but thanks for your answer.

delphiheaven

There are two aspects to trading the first is the acceptance and validation of the credit card details and the second is the transfering of funds to your bank account.

It is a big undertaking to do the first bit your self and unless you are a major organisation the costs will be prohibitive. Thus what many people use is a credit card agency such as iBill, ccbill.

The second aspect can be tckled in one of two ways, with a merchant account or without one.

To get a merchant account you will need a business account and you should contact your bank for details of who to obtrain one, the cost and importently whether it may be used for internet trading. For every transaction there will be a charge.

With the credits card agencies (ibill etc) they will also charge you per transaction but it depends on whether you are using your own merchant account or not. The charges for using there service without a merchant account are around the 15% mark. With your own merchant account they reducing there charges but of course you still have your own merhcnat account charges but all told you are probably talking 10 to 12%.

Most of the Credit Card agencies are US based and will pay you in dollers so you also have to factor in the exchange rate and any charges for cashing foreign cheques. These vary enoumiously. I had one cheque that the british bank charged £10 to cash and the US Issueing bank charged $15!! However my current bank charges nothing.

HTH
STeve

Check this one out..

www.ccavenue.com

Rgds
KC

thanks for the feedback, but www.ccavenue.com has too high Discount Rate( 5% - 7%), and they are in India...

So, other input is welcome!!

delphiheaven

I think that you will be hard pressed to beat those rates to be honest, although charging in rupees is going to put a lot of people off so personally I wouldn't use it (unless I was targeting Indian users).

One observation that I have is that processing charge tends to be lower where there is a set up charge. Whether the reduction in the rate covers the set up charge is obviously a calculation that only you can perform. Personally I would think it unlikely that you are going to recover you initial outlay very quickly at all and it is probably better to avoid such setup fees.

The very cheapest way of doing this, although not the best. If to get your own merchant account (transaction charge will between 2 and 6 percent but lower rates only available if you are shifting in volume). Then accept payments via HTTPS and process them manually as a 'customer not present' transaction. If you are selling products that need to be posted then this method is acceptable. If you are allowing people to download software etc then it is a bad idea.

Steve

Hi mouatts,

I don't understand exactly why it is not a good idea to have your own merchant account if you want to sell software online (so that after payment with creditcard the buyer gets an e-mail with the download-link)...

why should this not work..?

Or maybe I misunderstood you..? :-)

delphiheaven

There's no problem if you can validate the credit card details when you take them in. Possibly your Merchant Account supplier will provide you with the EPOS type equipment to do this (I know they do as standard in some countries eg Australia) but not in all countries.

If you can't validate the credit card then you are either going to have to risk not getting paid, or wait until you have confirmation from the credit card company after you have sent them the transaction slips. An alternative is to obtain an authorisation code for every transaction, but this might end up very time consuming.

HTH
Steve

but wait: you don't have to validate the creditcard yourself..!! :-)

as far as I know, if you have an internet merchant account, the creditcard is checked by the processor.

I mean, otherwise it would be a little bit too risky...

delphiheaven

No you are confusing the two things here.

A merchant account allows you to accept credit cards and have the funds transfered from the credit card company to you bank account. Go into a shop and hand over your credit card and the payment gets to the shop via their Merchant account. It has nothing to do with the internet as such.

A credit card transaction processing service (eg ibill,ccbill) validates credit card payments. These payments are processed against a merchant account. If you don't have a merchant account it will be theirs. If you do have a merchant account then it will be yours.

The point is if you don't have a merchant account yourself you will pay higher transaction charges than if you have one yourself.

I do not think that you will find a transaction processing service that utilises their merchant account that will charge you less than 10% simply because the transaction processing company has to pay the merchant account transaction cost as well as make a profit its self.

Steve

okay, I understand.

delphiheaven

Hello,

This question has been open for quite a while now and needs to be wrapped up.

EXPERTS: If any of the experts could come back and post any suggestions as to how they feel this could be wrapped up (delete, 0 PAQ, award points, etc), I'm sure the moderators would appreciate it.  If you feel you deserve points here, but don't care to respond, the question might very well get DELETED.  

ASKER:  Please return and finalize this question.  Abandoning a question is in violation of the member agreement.

Please do NOT accept this comment as an answer, as I am simply trying to alert those involved that the question is still open.

Thank you,

BRUNO

yes, I think the points are yours :-)

delphiheaven