Big Paymenst Credit Card Acceptance

Can somebody tell me how websites like RentACoder accept credit card payments like big payments, $xx,xxx, can somebody recommend the best way to securely accept large payments not PayPal, also how do you integrate that kind of stuff into your code is there something special, I never understood this...

Anything on this subject would be appreciated...

 

I imagine they have an a merchant account that does not have a problem with it. For some companies, large amounts are the norm. For them, it should be very easy to get such a merchant account. As for integration, they most likely use a gateway and its API just like anyone else would...

 

Yeah but can you recommend me to a company that has a cheap transaction rate maybe not based on the amount, Who would you recommend?

 

I do not know of any such company that does not base it on the amount. Any company I can think of that would support that would take a percentage of the amount, such as 2.25%.

 

is there anyway to set it up your own gateway or something so every company is paying that much that seems a lot...

I was looking at this company, but I dont like the percentage
http://www.monstermerchantaccount.com/

That means paypal is actually not that much worse then these....

Also is there special companies just for escrow cause I need huge amounts to be escrowed....and i dont want to be losing that much on just holding the money...

 

Yes, there are companies for that. I saw one the other day. I don't have any experience there, though.

 

mystik do you have a link, are they by any chance cheaper per transaction?

 

authorize.net <-- I think is a flat fee of $10.00 a month for what your looking for. It's usually setup by default with osC and ZenCart.

 

Thanks Bliss but can you show me the page with the $10 offer or where did you get the $10 figure from...

Also I heard that theres is something weird with American Express where they take back payments if a customer is unhappy automatically with out even returning the product or anything, anybody no anything about this...you think it is enough to just accept visa/mastercard/e-check or is discover good too...

 

Well, I was quoting you what I had to pay back last year when I was going to setup an account with them. Yep, that is how credit cards work and they have always worked like that. It's a risk you have to take to accept credit card payments. All credit cards are great. I don't think e-checks are that good though.

 

There are two parts needed: 1) a merchant account and 2) a gateway.

The $10 per month (if accurate?) is the monthly gateway fee and this is either for a set number of transactions and/or there are additional per transaction fees and these vary widely based on gateway -- some charge in block of transaction (something like $49 per 500), others are simply per transaction (usually in pennies, possibly up to $0.25).

There is still a discount rate of some sort also associated with each transaction and this is a percentage of the transaction amount.

Some providers bundle the two together (like the monsterxxx reference I saw in this thread) but usually, if you devote the time to do the research, your better deal will be shopping around for the best merchant account proveder and the best gateway -- keeping the two separate, at least in the shopping stage, will give you more options in the merchant service provider area which will usually provide your bigger saving -- especially if when dealing with BIG transactions in the 5 digit range.

Hope this helps. Good luck.

 

I get it sort of...This would be my first time doing my own credit card payments online and Im kind of new to this...Can you tell me what the difference between a merchant account and a gateway is? What does each actually do...

And who would you recommend?

 

Kepe in mind that authorize.net is only an electronic payment gateway as pointed out. Other gateways are the Verisign's Payflow services and LinkPoint. Verisign will give you between 500-1,000 free transactions and LinkPoint currently does not have any transaction fee.

But with something like $xx,xxx you should not be worrying about a small transaction fee. The more volume you do, the discount rate can be lowered as well.

 

yeah not worried about fixed rates of like a dollar or so but when it comes to % i doesnt fit my job since they are commisions and Im only getting a % of the money also...

 

Depending on what you are selling, where you are located, etc, discount rate is usually around 2.39%, so this is about $2.39 off a $100 sale. A portion of that goes to Visa, some goes to the agent, and the rest goes to the merchant account processor (MAP).

It is not much, this is why they all rely on volume & customers to help them stay in business

 

Visa and MasterCard have large ticket programs available for business like you. I would have to check on the specifics, but they have a much higher transaction fee, and the processing rate goes down to somewhere near 1.2%. This account type is only available using Nova as the back-end processor, FDMS, Ipayment, TMS, Cardservice or any other that use FDMS as the back-end cannot set this account type up.

As far as integrating into a website, I'm not sure how you would do it. I would think that authorize.net or verisign could be configured with a large ticket program, but I all of my customers that use it manually key their transactions into an online virtual terminal. I would have to check to see if it were possible. Personally, I would not allow a huge payment like this to be automatically processed. I would want some manual entry for security purposes.

 

I am a bit confused - is this a large ticket item or are you just speaking hypothetically?

if you are having a large volume, and expect large tickets - you should be talking to one of the larger processors like Chase to help you out. Depending on your business plan, and personal history - since all of these will come into play because of the volume, they will be able to help you set everything up appropriately. You will normally have to meet the amount per month that you think within a certain amount of months, else risk your discount rate going up.

 

You could setup your own gateway, but then again that's like setting up your own phone company so that you can save on long distance. Every company pays a percentage... your ability to get a better percentage depends on how much volume you do and how good a negotiater you are.

 

The merchant account is the actual bank account that allows you to exchange your credit card transaction into real money.

A gateway is a middle man that allows your website to funnel transaction to your merchant account.

Some merchant account providers either have their own gateway or a preferred gateway, others will work with most any gateway. It is possible to bypass a gateway and interfae directy to a merchant account host or processor (another middle man), but this has it's own problems and with all the new security requirements, I don't think you would save any money unless you were talking about 100's of thousands of transactions per month.

As Corey stated, worry about the discount rate as this will be the biggest savings in your 5 digit ticket amounts -- any gateway fees will be insignificant compared to whatever discount rate you negotiate! That being said, find rhe most reliable gateway you can find that works with merchant account provider you select.

Good luck!