Business Card Compare Credit Offer Small, not easy??
I am a student that thought up a good idea for an e-business site. I would
like to pilot it, but here's the catch...I live in South Africa and so
web-publishing etc. is expensive (our currency being worthless and all)!
Surely there must be good free places that will host a small site, and what
about the whole story with the credit card transactions? Are there not free
secure sites through which my transactions can be done? The answers would be
simpler if I was in the US, but alas not. Please help me...budding
e-commerce entrepeneur wanting to take a bash at all of this.
With credit card transactions, I'm assuming you don't already have a
merchant account. You'll need one if you do any serious volume (if you only
have a couple low-priced orders a month, it won't be cost effective). If
you need a merchant account, there are about a bazillion companies out there
waiting to give you one. Be careful. You can get a merchant account
"through" anyone, but there are a finite number of companies actually
processing and "underwriting" the actual transactions. These other
companies are merely "brokers" getting a commission to resell the
processor's services. Compare all the rates and monthly fees. Ask about
other fees that may not be explicitly stated, such as annual fees,
chargeback fees, monhtly minimum fees, higher transaction rates for
"unqualified" transactions (such as when the address verification comes back
invalid). There are lots of "gotchas" and unfortunately I can't list them
all here. Also make sure you get 24x7 "live" phone support (toll-free
hopefully). Some companies like to offer 24x7 support, but it's by email.
Offering 24x7 email support doesn't guarantee an answer in less than 24
hours unless they tell you how soon they'll respond, so watch out!
I'd recommend working with a "credit card transaction processing company"
that takes a percentage of each sale until you have been in business for a
while and can see the level of volume you're doing and you get the business
processes worked out. These CC processing companies will often take
anywhere from 5% to 25%of the sale price as their commission (many are
around 10-15%). But you often have no application fee or setup fee, no
minimum monthly fees, no annual fees. Essentially, with many of these
services, if you sell nothing, you pay nothing -- they simply take a portion
of your earnings. This type of service would give you a good "low-risk"
method of starting up your business with very little or no money out of your
pocket. For services like this, check out: www.ccnow.com. They also have a
page listing other firms that offer similar services (ccnow only allows you
to sell "tangible" shipped goods, not services or downloadable software,
etc.). Check out this page for more: http://www.ccnow.com/otherfirms.html.
And www.paypal.com will also allow your customers to pay using their credit
cards (although I think the customers have to sign up for a paypal account
first -- a bit cumbersome -- not good for "impulse" sales).
Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with these services and companies listed
above, nor can I speak for their quality as I don't use them. I'm simply
listing them to give you some places to look and some choices to get you
started. There are other companies offering the same or similar services at
better and worse rates -- so by all means, look around and compare well
before you sign up with anyone!