What Merchant Gateway and Merchant Account do you use and why?

[electricblue]

Hi Everyone,

Curious about what Merchant Gateways everyone uses as well as Merchant Accounts?

We've heard a lot about Eway.com.au. Supposedly it's one of the 'standards' for a Gateway here.

As for Merchant Accounts though - I haven't heard what the standard is. What Merchant account do you use and why?

Besides lower costs and transaction fees, is there any other reason why someone would choose one bank over another? With many things you have to consider more things than just a lower cost, because it may not be as good 'quality' of a product. I'm new to Merchant Accounts however - for all I know they either work or they don't, and so all you have to do is shop around for the best costs all around (combined costs of set up fee, yearly fee, monthly fee, transaction fee, and per transaction percentage fee)

--E

[chexton]

Hi electricblue,

Great question, there should be some very interesting responses.

In answer to your last question, the other thing I'd look out for is an ongoing relationship. Merchant accounts can be notoriously difficult to get and banks can ask for certain amounts of collateral, etc. You really want to capitalise on whatever relationship you already have with a banking partner as it should make your application faster and your ongoing relationship a bit easier to manage.

As for an online gateway, eWay are pretty good in Australia so there is no hassle there. Online gateways are 'less trouble' than the underlying account in the sense that it should be easier to get so feel free to shop around a bit more on that front. eWay are pretty reliable though!

What type of account are you looking at? It sounds like it'll definitely be an online business, are you starting an online store? My company is working toward making it easy for people to accept credit cards on digital invoices, i.e. without your own merchant account, but we won't be offering the same for online stores unfortunately! Hence my question.

Chris

[electricblue]

Hi Chris,

Thanks for your thoughts. Yes, it's a top secret online store ;-) We actually launched it last year and were just using Paypal. We're ready for expansion though and are getting Infusionsoft, looking at Eway (so far their customer service has been awesome!) and a merchant account ...

I just got one quote from ANZ - I was shocked that they were suggesting there might be a security deposit of up to $15,000 :-\

-E

[chexton]

electricblue,

Very interesting but not overly surprising, the banks can be quite concerned with potential fraud. Of course it's hopeful you won't have fraud that warrants any usage of the deposit, but it does mean you'll have to come up with $15,000! Hopefully it doesn't come to that .

Best of luck, definitely get some more quotes from other providers. Post here if you have any other specific questions, I'm sure everyone will be happy to help.

Chris

[PMfin]

Originally Posted by electricblue

Hi Chris,

Thanks for your thoughts. Yes, it's a top secret online store ;-) We actually launched it last year and were just using Paypal. We're ready for expansion though and are getting Infusionsoft, looking at Eway (so far their customer service has been awesome!) and a merchant account ...

I just got one quote from ANZ - I was shocked that they were suggesting there might be a security deposit of up to $15,000 :-\

-E

ELECTRIC BLUE,

I would suggest that you look at shopping your merchant account around. You will find that Banks will come to the party if you have a good business plan for going forward. Most of our clients would normally start off with their current bank as they would normally hold a record of your transactions and be able to gauge the risk associated with it. They can then shop it around if need be.

Several things that will have an impact on your fees will be:

- Timeframe between payment and delivery of goods (the longer the time frame, the more expensive it is)
- number of anticipated transactions per month
- average size of transaction (Larger transactions can be seen to hold more risk)

If you have a good banking relationship, you should be able to get past these with your banker. I know ANZ has a good team in VIC which gets things done quickly and have come up with some great quotes of late..

More than happy to put you in touch if you like..