How do ya choose a Payment Gateway?
If you have a website and sell online then you need a payment gateway. A gateway performs (arguably) essential money processing services including:
What Payment Gateways Do?
- accept payment from your customers
- manage the customer payment relationship
- pay you
- perhaps other optional value added services
Why should you care?
You should care because the payment gateway is going to take a slice of your business, like it or not. Some take much bigger slices than others.
Slices? Nobody told me about the hidden charges!
Well there are hidden charges. You can get dinged for everything under the sun, including all of these and more:- account setup fee
- single transaction fee (times # of transactions)
- transaction "discount" fee (they bleed you more)
- account monthly fee ($25 dollars per month, or more)
- funds transfer fee (they charge you to receive your money)
- chargeback fees (they ding you because they failed to properly authenticate the payment)
- other fees designed to part you from your money
If you plan on setting up an account, maybe it might be a good idea
to ask the payment gateway if they charge any of the above (or other) fees. If they do, you might
also want to know:
HOW MUCH is it going to cost you?
Not everybody takes huge slices of your money
Up to now picking a payment gateway service means choosing the least of all the evils, because lets face it, all of the large payment gateways are for-profit entities that couldn't give a rats !#% whether or not you actually receive value for your dollar. It's putting funds into their account that really matters to the BIG LOSERS:
The BIG LOSERS
| Payment "Service" | What to expect |
|---|---|
| AuthorizeNet.com | Hands down almost the worst of the lot |
| Worldpay | If you think it can't get worse, try them |
| Linkpoint/Cardservice International | Well not too bad except for the obselete software |
| Planet Payment | You may not get paid. You were warned! |
Want to add another BIG LOSER?
Send us an email to add another loser to this list. Be sure to tell us "What to expect".
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