Advice on online payment solution

[primitive]

Good day,

I am trying to find an online payment solution that allows merchants
(me) based internationally to accept and process credit card
payments.

Paypal is not fully functional in my country (Trinidad and Tobago) and
this option is not currently available. I have looked at
Authorize.net, but I find their setup to be extremely confusing as I
still don't even know if they setup accounts for non-us residents/
citizens (one of the least informative websites?). I am using satchmo,
so any suggested solution should work with satchmo, but if not, I
would still like to hear about it.

Thanks for your help.

[primitive]

I received a less than polite from email from Authorize.net that they
only process US currency, and only work with US businesses. So that
option is out.

Does anyone have any other suggestions at all? The ability to accept
online payments is absolutely crucial to the success of my business
and any help would be appreciated.

Regards.

[Günter Walser]

Basically two options:

You can either search for a company offer the service for your target
customer base (geograhically) and your business. Ususally these providers
charge you some setup fee (at least in Europe) and some prepaid or pay per
transaction fee. And usually you must have a extra agreement with the credit
card company, as these will pay you and the saervice company does only the
approval side.

Or you can look for one of PayPal, Google or Amazon, I call them integrated
suppliers. These also offer these services, usually with a lower or reduced
setup fee but some higher transactions costs (guess depends on your country
how much in reality).

The approach I took is to go first for PayPal - bear the cost of the higher
fees but save on intial invest into setup. Watch how business evolves and
then simply calculate the ROI for any payment enhancement project according
you your actual data.

I for example found out, that quite high precentage of customers doesn't
like CreditCard (or PayPal) payment at all and prefers Cash On Demand. Ant,
that I'ms til running cheaper with PayPal, conidring that more then expected
customers buy Cash on Demand or even Prepaid.

rgds

[primitive]

Thanks for responding, but Paypal will not work for me. I did do a
search for a payment solution, and found a couple. I am evaluting now
and will post my feedback here for future reference. The one thing I
don't like with these merchants is that they have some shady looking
websites which are very unclear as to what services they provide (very
bad sign in my book).

The most promising was http://FirstAtlanticCommerce.com/Gateway but
they require a huge initial investment to setup a merchant account.
The minimum was $50,000 US with your business already having a credit
history spanning 6 months and with annual sales in excess of $250,000.
Needless to say, thats not an option (unless someone has 300,000 to
lend?).

Others I am looking at are:

TrustCommerce (sent email, no response yet)
Click2Pay (sent email, no response yet)
Dalpay (their first entry under business types is "Adult toy
retailer", so I don't know about this one)

I will post my results soon. Anyone else with suggestions? I would
appreciate any further assistance.

[primitive]

I am still digging around, and I found one that is very positive so
far. Its called Intabill and it seems to be what I am looking for. I
sent an email, and they responded, but they did not answer my specific
questions, but based on what they have on their website, it looks like
a decent enough service, considering my limited options.

I am going to try to sign up in the next couple of months (because you
need to have a registered company, etc. to start the application
process, and my registration form has'nt been submitted yet). I am
still unclear how the integration works, but I am assuming its a
redirect checkout url or something similar.

I will still be looking around, and will post any updates.

[joasch]

On May 13, 2:38 pm, primitive <laroygr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks for responding, but Paypal will not work for me. I did do a

Just curious, why wont PayPal work for you?

/Joakim

[primitive]

Well, from what I understand paypal does not allow me to use its
merchant services in my country. This is a link to the supported
countries https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_display-approved-signup-countries-outside.

My country is listed under "Send Money to Anyone in the Growing PayPal
Network" which is confusing as it does not say whether or not I can
receive or can send, i.e. does it mean that people can only send me
money? or that I can send money? I have no idea.

I sent them an email some time back, and I have not gotten a reply. I
will try again, but I am not willing to compromise to an extent where
my business is affected, and it seems that this might be what I would
have to do in order to user PayPal.

[joasch]

And that country is?

On May 20, 12:38 pm, primitive <laroygr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Well, from what I understand paypal does not allow me to use its
> merchant services in my country. This is a link to the supported

> countrieshttps://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_display-approved-signup....

[primitive]

Sorry, Trinidad and Tobago (it's in the Caribbean), but it is
mentioned in my first post. I am a Jamaican (Caribbean as well), but I
work in Trinidad as a geoscience consultant.

[primitive]

This is what Paypal said:

"Thank you for contacting PayPal. We regret the delay in responding to
your service request.

We sincerely appreciate your interest in becoming a PayPal member.
Unfortunately, we are not yet providing payment receiving services for
Trinidad and Tobago. You may send money using PayPal but you can not
receive payments at this time.

Visit https://www.paypal.com/ and click the "Worldwide" link in the
footer of the page for more information on the countries and regions
that PayPal supports.

If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact us
again.

Sincerely,
Laura
Merchant Solutions
PayPal, an eBay Company"

This confirms what I had suspected.

[Iain Mac Donald]

On Sat, 24 May 2008 05:30:19 -0700 (PDT)
primitive <laroy...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Unfortunately, we are not yet providing payment receiving services for
> Trinidad and Tobago.

There isn't a Satchmo payment module for Worldpay but they might be
worth applying to for a Merchant Account. If your application was
successful you could create the module.

https://secure.worldpay.com/app/application.pl?brand=affiliate

I use them for a few stores (not Satchmo) and I am happy with them.
They would be expensive for a low volume site.

[joasch]

I thought I sent this before, but somehow it must have been lost...

I you are at T & T, which isn't far from US, isn't it possible for you
to open an US bank account? I know this was a solution in early PP
days that you could if you just had an US bank account you could use
PP even from Europe, you just redraw the money to the US account and
then took it from there...

WorldPay, as Ian suggested, is also an option. I used to have an WP
account but canceled it in favour of PP. I really like the feature of
PP that you can send an electronic invoice which mean you can also
handle sales off site easily, just by email contact.

/Joakim

On May 24, 2:30 pm, primitive <laroygr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> This is what Paypal said:
>
> "Thank you for contacting PayPal. We regret the delay in responding to
> your service request.
>
> We sincerely appreciate your interest in becoming a PayPal member.
> Unfortunately, we are not yet providing payment receiving services for
> Trinidad and Tobago. You may send money using PayPal but you can not
> receive payments at this time.
>

> Visithttps://www.paypal.com/and click the "Worldwide" link in the

[primitive]

Thanks guys, I have included worldpay as an option (neck and neck with
IntaBill). Checked out their site and I particularly like that they
are RBS (Royal Bank of Scotland) affiliates. I have sent them a note,
so I am waiting for a response. It is really expensive from first
glance though, but I rather that than some fly by night operation.

@ joasch - I was also thinking that setting up a US bank account would
be an easy option. How I was going to go about it was to register my
business as a Delaware business (you can do this online). However,
they informed me that due to the Patriot Act, setting up a bank
account remotely in the US is next to impossible, even if I was to
visit and try to set it up in person. I did not pursue this option
much further, so if you have any knowledge about this, please let me
know.

Regards.