Anyone know the best merchant services to take credit card payments

d.ross_2 · 13 May 2011 at 5:36PM

martindow wrote: »

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.

Yes I had similar problems, but then people have had similar problems with other companies.

I still prefer Sagepay to Paypal, as paypal is unsafe and expensive.

ehlo · 13 May 2011 at 5:52PM

as paypal is unsafe

Based on what?

d.ross_2 · 13 May 2011 at 7:20PM

ehlo wrote: »

Based on what?

Based on their lack of security compared to the other companies like Sagepay.

martindow · 14 May 2011 at 10:40AM

d.ross wrote: »

Yes I had similar problems, but then people have had similar problems with other companies.

I still prefer Sagepay to Paypal, as paypal is unsafe and expensive.

I found it frightening the Sage Pay seemed to have no redundancy on their system so if one part goes down it could not switch to a parallel system so payments could continue to be processed.

They made changes ('improvements') which made it unstable but couldn't or didn't revert to the original system. Under its previous owner Protx I don't remember similar problems or downtime.

I wasn't considering Paypal but other companies like Worldpay. I tried to find data comparing the percentages of downtime of different companies but failed. Does anyone publish comparative figures?

Ladybirds · 17 May 2011 at 5:19AM

I contacted Sagepay, they charge £20 per month plus the % for card payments, but I still need a merchant service which seems pointless as I pay £45 a month the bank for the merchant service. It defeats the object of adding more costs with going to Sagepay. After reading the posts I won't go to sagepay now, thank you. Last thing I need is unreliability. Thanks everyone.

martindow · 17 May 2011 at 8:50AM

Ladybirds wrote: »

I contacted Sagepay, they charge £20 per month plus the % for card payments, but I still need a merchant service which seems pointless as I pay £45 a month with HSBC for the merchant service. It defeats the object of adding more costs with going to Sagepay. After reading the posts I won't go to sagepay now, thank you. Last thing I need is unreliability. Thanks everyone.

If you are taking cards online, card processors like Streamline insist that you use an intermediary like Sagepay to deal with card details so you can't avoid the extra cost.

easyhost · 17 May 2011 at 2:18PM

i user perpetual payment (now cashflows) http://www.cashflows.com/.

Pet1 · 18 May 2011 at 5:01PM

Ph Card save 0844 2091500 I have a merchant number which is £20 a month and card save I use their terminals and that is £20 a month also they offered me the cheapest % I could find.

Ladybirds · 19 May 2011 at 6:22PM

Easy hosts and Pet1 thank you for your input. I will look into these.

patman99 · 19 May 2011 at 7:50PM

Moneybookers may be worth a look-at. Their system works just like a Bank account. You can get a card that allows you to withdraw cash from ATMs or purchase stuff in shops or online.