Online Card Processing Options

rtho782

I'm selling goods online via my own site and currently using Stripe for credit card processing.

I'm currently processing about 250 card payments a month for a gross volume of ~£16500 or so. Assuming they are all UK cards, this brings fees to about £281 a month.

I sell probably 10% of my orders outside the UK, and stripe are increasing fees for EU cards shortly. I expect my volumes to grow, and I expect the share of non-UK payments to increase when I hit the VAT registration threshold in about May, and am then able to sell goods abroad VAT free (currently I don't charge VAT, but I pay VAT on my supply, which overall is better for domestic sales, but worse for international ones. I charge VAT to EU customers via IOSS on top of my normal prices)

I'm looking around at alternatives. Paypal charge more, although not much more if I use Quickbooks (Currently using Xero, but it would be cheaper to have a quickbooks account and never use it than pay the normal Paypal rates). It seems though that a lot of providers have very opaque pricing structures.

I feel like I might be better off with something with a monthly basic charge now, and a number of included transactions, rather than stripe and it's 1.4%+20p/2.9%+20p model.

Anyone have any advice or suggestions? I don't mind signing a long contract if that makes sense. 

martindow

I suspect that many card processors will increase charges for EU transactions if they haven't already done so as another brexit bonus.  Are you B2B mainly?  I get that impression as you talk about sending VAT free. 

I've not dealt with this for years, but rates used to be negotiable according to to the turnover and the proportion of credit to debit card sales.  This may explain the opaqueness you are finding when trying to discover their fees.

I would suggest contacting different providers to get rates for your circumstances.  Then try to beat them down by quoting others' rates and contract periods etc.