Online merchant accounts? Business accounts

Twinkle77

Hi

Partner is a sole trader.
He rents business premises so has to pay business rates.
He has just got rid of an expensive chip & pin terminal and merchant account but he needs something that will:

1) enable him receive payments online
2) give him merchant account number - is it true that if you are a sole trader it is illegal for you to trade online without a merchant ID?

eBay has limitations without a merchant ID.....

Anyone got any tips? Would really appreciate it

paddyrg

Have a look at Worldpay Zinc - it's like a partway house for electronic payments, but very keenly priced for PAYG at 2.75%. There are handset discounts available still I think with a referral, there is a thread in the referrals section or feel free to PM if it looks suitable.

im-lost

paddyrg wrote: »

Have a look at Worldpay Zinc - it's like a partway house for electronic payments, but very keenly priced for PAYG at 2.75%. There are handset discounts available still I think with a referral, there is a thread in the referrals section or feel free to PM if it looks suitable.

Won't help with taking payment online



To the OP, you dont need a merchant id to trade online, merchant ids are to do with accepting payments online, with many services you don't need one, PayPal, nochex, skrill (formerly moneybookers) etc etc

If he was told it was 'illegal' the person saying it is probably referring to the need to have a different merchant id to one that's used for offline payments, it's not so much 'illegal' but the 2 types of services have different risks so many providers separate them out by using 2 merchant accounts / ids

Depending on the level of payments taken, it can be cheaper to use PayPal and the like, they really aren't that much more expensive after you take in all the various costs with a 'proper' payment service

Can you elaborate on the eBay limits and a menchant id, I've never come across this

paddyrg

im-lost wrote: »

Won't help with taking payment online

Thought it may help with the releasing of the overpriced chip and pin device part ;-)

Since Ebay really push you down the PayPal-integrated route so hard, and the margin difference between PayPal and running your own credit card merchant system for online ebay payments is so small, it probably makes little difference

Twinkle77

Thank you for your responses!

So we have izettle I found out last night so that's fine for face to face or over the phone payments

eBay have a £1,500 limit - if you earn more than that, they hold into it until you provide em with a merchant account ref.... They still allow transactions but won't allow you to make withdrawals to your bank account until you've given them the merchant ID.

I guess other than using PayPal, we need to find a legit way of receiving online via website payments too.....

GGB1979

Sorry and to add, you can use the Zinc system for on the phone payments as well as in person using their chip and pin card. In fact it also allows you to use the app to record cash payments taken too so that at the end of the day you have a full list of txns - obviously not everyone will want ot use that, but a nice feature I thought.