After auditing the European offers (for France and Austria), I found several providers (AtosOrigin for France and Mpay24 for Austria). Anyway, these providers cost more than any US third party providers (average of 10% per transaction + ?0.5).

I was wondering:

• Would it be better to open an US bank account to be able to get a US merchant account? If yes, how? Who should we contact? Is this legal?
• Would it be better to continue with third party payment gateways and wait the opportunity, in a near future, to switch to a better EU offer (as soon as it will be available) ?
• Is there any other EU alternatives I am not aware of?

This question is, I guess, a redundant question to all NON-US businesses. Some countries may offer interresting alternatives to their customers but here, in EU, it seems there is still a lack of offers.
Maybe I wasn't able to find the good providers and some members here already found the beauty pearl.

Please share your lucky finds.

its really hard to get a NON US merchant account because after 9/11 US has imposed patriot act which has made non us open acount in US upto imposible and without US bank account getting merchant account is hard.

Did you check out Barclay's, HSBC or maybe the electronic payment gateway Protx and see what they have to offer?

You might check out eTrade - some clients have had success with them for opening a bank account.

A merchant account is pretty easy to get - but the bank account is more difficult because of the YKYC (you know your customer) regulation. Some foreign banks also have relationships with US banks and you might be able to get a US bank account that way

etrade is only for share trading. Even to open a bank account with etrade is pretty tough and these days etarde have closed accepting new applications from asia pacific region.

It could be for trade sharing - yes. But we get about one merchant a week that has successfully opened an eTrade account that is compatible with the merchant account processor (MAP)

even though etrade provides merchant account but its still tough for non us to open account with them

And see I did not even know they provided a merchant account, I only thought they provided the bank account. You learn something new all the time.

It is difficult but the clients that I have spoken to said that persistence and patience paid off for them