Do I need merchant services to receive payments

[amanda1newuser]

Hello everyone

Just after some help please - I am thinking of setting up an website and thought I might go the whole hog and get a webshop to save faffing about down the line

I know that the bt webshops are supported by sagepay but would the money taken on the site go direct into my bank or do I need a 3rd party involved, ie merchant services.??

I am trying to budget for everything and dont want to get slapped with additional charges if I do sign up

any feedback would be greatly appreciated

Thanks in advance

Amanda

[Peter_G]

Amanda

If I were starting from scratch, without a pre-existing bricks and mortar store, I would simply opt for a basic PayPal business account.  We don't use Sagepay, but because we have a merchant account already, we offer a choice between direct card payments and Paypal in our eShop.  However, the vast majority of our customers choose to use Paypal. 

To my shame, I haven't carried out a direct cost comparison between PayPal and direct merchant services.  My impression is that the transaction costs are similar, but that the PayPal fixed costs are much smaller, well zero actually.

So, in answer to your direct question, if you were to choose to use Paypal alone, you would not need a merchant services account.

Hope this helps

Peter_G

www.qgifts.co.uk

[strapstore]

Amanda,

It might be worth you looking at Paypal's Website Payments Pro, which will let you accept credit/debit card payments from BT eShop.

It also allows for payment by Paypal/Paypal Express. Most of my customers tend to use credit/debit card but that may be because I have it as default method.

You don't need a merchant account, all the payments go into your Paypal account and can be withdrawn from there.

Cost is £20 per month plus usual transaction charge for your Paypal account, 20p per transaction plus 3.4%. (If your products are £10 and under there is also the option of micropayments which changes the transaction charge to 5p plus 5%)

I'm sure it's not the cheapest option but for me it was the most convenient and quickest, also I have an Ebay shop and it makes life easier for monthly accounts when I can use the reports from Paypal to cover all sources of income.