Are there any shopping cart/payment services that are like Google Checkout or PayPal but don’t require you to have a Google or PayPal account? Google Checkout has some nice features, but not everyone has a Gmail account and making a new one is a pain since so many names are already taken. I’ve looked at Zen, but it would be nice to have all the handling of payment be done on a different server so I don’t have to worry about storing CC info on my site.
I don’t know about Google but Paypal doesn’t require users to have a Paypal account for checkout just a credit card
Thanks, I was missing the setting that allowed that. It works now.
Anyone have experiences using PayPal shopping cart as a seller that they want to share?
What’s your main objective?
Services like Google Checkout and PayPal will be relatively simple to implement, but they tend to have higher transaction fees vs. a shopping cart that you would install and host, linked to your own merchant account.
Would you rather get up and running quickly, and pay higher fees, or would you rather go through more effort and pay lower fees?
I wouldn’t be so worried about hosting a shopping cart for security reasons. Any good shopping cart won’t store an unencrypted credit card number in your database.
Paypal does not charge a per transaction for its cart that I’m aware of. If you are talking about credit card processing fees, I hate to say it but I challenge you to find a better deal than Paypal.
This is where it gets complicated because you get into the complexities of merchant processing fees, and the credit card schedules…
The nice thing about PayPal’s rate is that it is easy to understand - 2.9% + thirty cents a transaction. It’s a blended rate that masks their true costs. Few other credit card rates you find online will be that easy. Credit card merchants will often advertise a three-tiered blended rate (each tier representing a type of card).
To make a long story short, I believe the best way to compare the prices of credit card merchant accounts, and the way to get the most competitive account is to go with ones that charge you the interchange fees and add a few basis points to cover their own costs and provide for a profit margin. The reality is that the cost varies by credit card. Here are Visa’s Interchange Rates (PDF) and here are Mastercards (another PDF).
If you do a Google search for “cost plus interchange rates” or something similar, you’ll find quotes from credit card merchants using that pricing model.
The general strategy is to think of what affinity groups you might belong to (think credit union, trade association, and any other professional groups you belong to), approach the credit card merchants that serve those groups, and ask for the interchange cost-plus rate for that group.
My rate is basically the interchange rate plus eight basis points (.0008%). I use TSYS as my credit card processor and authorize.net for a payment gateway between my shopping cart and credit card merchant account (I pay $5/month for authorize.net through TSYS, and my average cost, accounting for all payment gateway fees, and the misc. other fees that get tacked on, and accounting for all the different cards that people use (corporate cards, mileage cards, etc.) is 2.2% (that has the per transaction fee baked into it). That’s my percentage when I look what was charged through the merchant account, and I divide out by the fees.
So thats 2.2%, compared to 2.9% plus thirty cents.
PayPal is a much easier way to go, and the rate is easier to understand, but if you’re willing to shop around navigate the merchant account minefield, and have a separate shopping cart, you can get a lower rate than PayPal. I encourage people to really shop around though, negotiate, and specifically ask for the interchange cost plus rates.
Thanks, that’s great information.