Trying to Decide on a Payment Processor for Credit Cards on Web Site?
If you’re going to try to process credit card payments from your web site, you’ve got a lot of learning to do. On the one hand, there are the third party providers like PayPal, and there are the merchant account providers like Authorize.net. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, have a read of the following articles.
Solve the Payment Processing Problem – I found this particularly enlightening. Good description of the differences between a merchant account (like Authorize.net) and a third-party processor (like PayPal).
Put your Money where your Mouse Is: 6 Payment Gateways Reviewed – This one was great too – a good review of several payment gateways.
I’ve looked further into Authorize.net. On the plus side, you can do everything through an API, and no “Pay now with PayPal” button is required on your site. It also offers a nice looking package for recurring payments, and even handles trial periods to boot.
As for prices when using a merchant account, they’re not as clear cut as, say, PayPal is. There will be some calling around involved and prices are definitely negotiable.
I’m sure there’s going to be a lot of leg work involved as I go through the research process, so subscirbe to the RSS feed to get the updates I post to the blog.
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