Is it possible to use existing card machine for online payments?

scottishgirl87

My mum has a small business which without going into too much detail is primarily service based, however, she also supplies a small range of products in relation to the service provided. She has a website to advertise her services and we would like to start selling the products via the website. We have the e-commerce part pretty much ready to go but we can't decide what to do about taking payments.

My mum already has a portable card machine from Streamline Merchant Services, is there any way of using this to process the online payments?

We do not expect to get that many transactions (it will mainly be from existing clients) so paying a monthly fee to SagePay, WorldPay, etc. seems too costly as we're talking maybe 10 transactions a month at most. I'm not sure if there is someway to encrypt the card details which we can then manually enter into our existing card terminal?

Any points in the right direction would be greatly appreciated

martindow

Streamline want there to be an intermediary like Sagepay for online payments and also often want a second account with them which may have a minimum monthly charge. The risk of putting them through as customer not present transactions on your machine is that Streamline could close your main account if they found out.

Paypal may be an option as people can pay by card without having a their own PP accounts. You would have to pay their fees but there are no minimum monthly fees. Some people regard PP with suspicion which might put you off this option.

scottishgirl87

martindow wrote: »

Streamline want there to be an intermediary like Sagepay for online payments and also often want a second account with them which may have a minimum monthly charge. The risk of putting them through as customer not present transactions on your machine is that Streamline could close your main account if they found out.

Paypal may be an option as people can pay by card without having a their own PP accounts. You would have to pay their fees but there are no minimum monthly fees. Some people regard PP with suspicion which might put you off this option.

Thanks, Martin. I thought there may be something preventing us from doing it. We might just have to go down the Paypal route.

paddyrg

http://www.streamline.com/assets/Uploads/eCommerce-Product-notes/MOTO.pdf

This is Streamline's browser-based facility for people who already have merchant accounts - any use?

martindow

paddyrg wrote: »

http://www.streamline.com/assets/Uploads/eCommerce-Product-notes/MOTO.pdf

This is Streamline's browser-based facility for people who already have merchant accounts - any use?

I think Streamline's issue is dealing with credit card numbers sent over the internet whether you have a physical or virtual terminal to enter card details. We used to receive encrypted card details from our on line shop and tap the numbers into the card terminal until about ten years ago when they insisted that we used Sagepay (then called Protx) or a similar company. It is odd as there is no problem receiving customer not present phone orders and getting the card details to put into the terminal.

Brassedoff

I used to use streamline and had the same issue for some businesses.

We ended up having a full on merchant account at Paypal covering all the ops. It may not be how others would do it, but it means one account for on-line, in person and over the phone accounts. The added bonus we have was the ability to put pay here buttons on our invoices, this increased immediate collections by 20-30%.

Transferring money across to your nominated accounts has taken seconds. I have money multi currency's which is the main reason tbh we use that payment solution.