accepting credit cards
There are several different options for accepting credit cards, with varying levels of complexity and cost. I personally recommend the solutions below.
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PayPal is easy and inexpensive to set up. Transaction fees are low and generally work out to be equal or lower than a true merchant account if you have a low volume of sales (under $10,000/month). The drawbacks are that PayPal has less flexibility in the design and functionality of their shopping cart.
Learn more about selling with PayPal » |
| Mal's e-commerce is a remotely-hosted shopping cart solution that integrates with all of the major payment gateways like Authorize.net.
I originally encountered Mal's in the online crafter community, and it enjoys a solid reputation as a very useful, very affordable service. Mal's allows you to have realtime credit card processing, realtime shipping calculations, and other robust features without the cost or hassle of a full shopping cart application running on your server.
Learn more about Mal's e-commerce »
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For those customers whose needs are more complex than can be met by
a solution like PayPal or Mal's, I recommend Magento. While Magento is relatively new,
it already runs circles around other open-source offerings and most commercial applications as well.
Learn more about Magento » |
| There are many merchant account to choose from, often including your local bank. E-onlinedata is the merchant account provider I've chosen to work with.
I did several months of research and determined that e-onlinedata was the company that had the best balance of low fees, solid customer service, and experience serving online merchants.
Learn more about why I chose e-onlinedata »
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| Authorize.Net With most merchant accounts, you get a choice of payment processors. I recommend Authorize.net because they have the easiest, most widely supported integration protocol, and the most user-friendly interface. You can't sign up with them directly, but you can request them when you select your merchant account. |