Anyone know the best merchant services to take credit card payments

Ladybirds

The bank whom I have had a merchant service account with for years has increased their charges and now added a minimum adjustment fee which means if I don't earn enough they charge me for it, which puts my business in a situation where we have even less money.
They charge £45 per month for this service to enable me to charge credit cards via our online shop. Now I see a new charge called and interchange charge and a combined transaction charge, but no idea what its for. On the back of the statement it has the breakdown but doesn't mean much Im afraid.
I am looking for a method where I can take card payments without the high costs.
We take paypal but paypal charge higher than the bank to remove the funds from paypal to the bank account.

ehlo

So you only need online payment processing? Have you looked at sagepay, worldpay and streamline?

Ladybirds

ehlo wrote: »

So you only need online payment processing? Have you looked at sagepay, worldpay and streamline?

I use the EKM powershop online shop (excellent service) and saw they have sagepay, but ran from that as I thought it was connected to sage my accounting program which I am just getting my head around and didn't want to add more stress with getting another sage addition.

chalkie99

Ladybirds wrote: »

We take paypal but paypal charge higher than the bank to remove the funds from paypal to the bank account.

Don't quite understand that. PayPal don't charge anything to transfer to a bank account as long as you transfer, I think, over £50 and allow 2 to 3 days for the transfer.

martindow

chalkie99 wrote: »

Don't quite understand that. PayPal don't charge anything to transfer to a bank account as long as you transfer, I think, over £50 and allow 2 to 3 days for the transfer.

This has been reduced to 6 pounds now. You only have to pay to withdraw if you choose their faster service.

Ladybirds

martindow wrote: »

This has been reduced to 6 pounds now. You only have to pay to withdraw if you choose their faster service.

I can't find the email where I had the % paypal charge to transfer money from the paypal account to my bank account, but I have just noticed on an item just bought by my customer for £23.99 paypal deducted £1.02 Which is higher than the bank charge on any credit card transactions. Plus now I have the added cost of transferring the money to my bank account.
Am I missing something here?

d.ross_2

Paypal are far less secure than Sagepay

Ladybirds

d.ross wrote: »

Paypal are far less secure than Sagepay

Looking at sagepay now. EKM powershop are offering 3 months free trial. So here goes. I will let you know how it fairs.

chalkie99

PayPal have charged you 3.4% + 20p flat fee. There is no monthly transaction charge and there is no charge for transferring that to your bank account unless for some reason you require an express service.

If you are only undertaking online transactions and small totals then it may be your best option.

paulofessex

Have you looked at Pay Pal's Virtual terminal. £25 per month, not sure of other fees however.

martindow

Ladybirds wrote: »

Looking at sagepay now.

We use sage pay and they have had problems at the end of last year and earlier this year. At times you could not get into mysagepay to see transactions and there were also times when the site was down completely and customers were unable to pay leading to lost orders.

I was on the verge of leaving after these incidents and certainly would not recommend them.

http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2010/10/27/sage_pay_teething_problems/

http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2011/03/03/sagepay_more_downtime/