Merchant Account for small transactions

[christopher]

Hi,

I currently only accept payments via PayPal.

I plan to be accepting card payments via a merchant account and card processor by August-September.

I sell greeting cards (as well as much more expensive items). But the merchant accounts I have looked at have debit card fees per transaction of £0.27 - £0.40 (or more initially)

I really want to avoid reintroducing a minimum order value or increasing postage charges for cards, but I can't afford 15%-20% per transaction.

There are obviously many other considerations, but can anybody advise me if there are any merchant accounts which cater for these small debit-card transactions?

Thanks again.

Chris

Fab Cat Gifts

[Terry]

Im not sure about that to be honest. I use Sage Pay as my payment gateway and HSBC as my merchant bank Monthly charge of £20 from Sage Pay and then the card charges, as you describe.

Are you a member of Federation Of Small Businesses? I think they do a subsidised scheme for members?

Sorry - I haven't been much help really?

Terry

[christopher]

Thanks Terry.

Yes I am a member of the FSB. They use streamline and RBS WorldPay, but don't have details on their web-site of charges etc. I'll perhaps give them a ring.

[Dave]

We are members of the Federation Of Small Businesses (FSB) who have special rates with Streamline. The rates you get will depend on the number of orders you get a month, the average order value and whether you are new or not to taking cards online.

The best rate we can get for debit cards is 20.5p per transaction. For credit cards it varies depending on the type of card between 1.195% and 1.815% per transaction.

There is an annual fee with the FSB of something like £150 (can't remember exactly) but it was worth joining for us just for the credit card processing fees. You can also get free banking, legal advice etc

http://www.fsb.org.uk/benefits

PS Nice to see someone else from Leicester here

EDIT: PPS Just seen you are already members of FSB. If you send them an e-mail or give them a call with your membership number they should give you the charges.

[christopher]

Thanks Dave. I'll give them a ring.

[open]

Hi,
We used to be with streamline and the FSB had no problems with the service but now we use retail merchant services http://www.retailmerchantservices.co.uk/.
All of our processing costs came down and very happy with all aspects of card handling.

Alan.

[christopher]

Thanks Alan:
I have had a look on their web-site. You would get £25 if you referred me. I'll PM you my details. If you're not bothered just let me know and I'll send them an enquiry

Cheers.

Chris

[Stix]

I recently hooked up with Streamline/Worldpay. When I was looking into it, I came across something that Paypal offer for low value transactions. If remember rightly it was 5p charge plus 5%. Might have that wrong but it's well worth investigating this option for your situation.

[vazalla]

Using paypal you also pay a set amount plus percentage. if on the lowest rate its 3.2% plus 20p per transaction.

[925 Gifts]

I use sage pay (ecomms) and cardsave (cardmachine) they both charge me £0.20 per debit card and 1.4% credit. Not a member of the fsb

[christopher]

Thanks Mark. I'll speak to SagePay

[Dave]

Thanks Mark. I'll speak to SagePay

Don't forget you will still need a merchant account with someone like Streamline etc.

Also SagePay are putting their Monthly fee up from £20 ex vat to £25 ex vat per month shortly.

[christopher]

Thanks Dave,

I am at the stage where I do not yet have the sales to justify a Card Processing and Merchant Account however I think the lack of this facility loses sales, so I am planning to be set up by @ September.
Overall costs are very important, as is a flexible contract, but particularly I need to continue selling single low cost items (greeting cards) without having to set a minimum purchase. This makes the cost per transaction really relevant.
I can cope with monthly fees and percentage fees, but wherever I look the costs per transaction for debit cards will take most of my profit from single greeting card sales.
I am hoping that there is somebody who also sells low cost items (£1 - £2.50) who has found a way of keeping these profitable.

Many thanks again.

Chris

cat themed gifts | cat ornaments

[Red Devil]

PayPal has something called Micropayments

https://www.paypal-business.co.uk/ta...ypal/index.htm

I wouldn't normally recommend PayPal over Sagepay.

With greetngs cards, you might have to make a loss on those and make more profit on your larger items if using Sagepay. You cant really control the way people pay for things if you use more than one payment method.

[Stix]

That's the thing I was talking about. Thought I had made it up!

[christopher]

Thanks everyone, all the advice is appreciated. I will continue to look around and then make some decisions on how best to deal with low-value items.

Regards.

Chris

[compisax]

Re: Retail Merchant Services
Do you still use them? I recently applied for an account with them, they came back and said the Bluepark shopping cart was not supported.

[jimjamuk]

Have you thought about converting you paypal account to a micropayments paypal account. Not widely advertised but they do have these for sites with small payments. From the top of my head the rate is 5p + 5% which also from the top of my head means you pay less up to about the £8-£9 mark. You can have both accounts but obviously you can only point to the one in BP.