I have been reviewing a lot of credit card authorization companies the past week or so and I have noticed that for web transaction the asking percentage is huge. Anywhere from 2.8% - 3.5% for visa/mastercard acceptance.

I also found that if you were to manually have the credit card machine at your location of business... you could manually punch in the numbers yourself and obtain a rate of 1.7% Also by having the machine at your house, you would be able to take check orders over the phone and process them right there, without having the check in front of you.

If you are a small company and are only making 25-40% off of each sale, that extra 1-1.5% saved on credit card transactions can add up rather fast. Just think of it this way... every month you sell $1,000 of hosting/merchandise, you get $10-15 more in your pocket (gas money, and boy do we need it right now. Im paying $1.94 per gallon right now).


Just though I would pass this research on.

Yeah you are right, would add up real fast, but people are not big on giving their credit card over the telephone are they, so you would probably just do it manually from the order form.. still though, good way to save money.

Where do you obtain a machine like this?

WHen you create an account with the merchant you can get one from them.


You wouldnt have to take CC#'s over the phone... you could just have the order form encrypt it into the database... then have an admin page which will decrypt it when you enter it in the machine.

By the way... long time no see Gordy

Oh I understand, yeah could be very well worth it, especially when that %2-3+ is really going to affect you when you only make a little bit off the product yourself.

Yeah it has been a long time, have not seen you on AIM..

The only thing that would worry me would be the liability potential. Is there a greater legal risk that a merchant runs if they process the data themself, rather than have it encrypted and send it straight to the gateway or bank software?

If you are going to do this, make sure you put in the online form to ask for the CVV code of the card, this can help to cut down on fraud.

I don't see any problem in using a machine from a machine at your place of business.

I would be worried about the liability of this too.
Then again, there are lots of companies in other industries that use machines at their workplace to process CC transactions that don't have any problems with liability issues.

I think there is a lot you can do to prevent fraud.
I know when I use a CC or debit card online or over the telephone there are a number of questions they ask me, ie. my address, the numbers in my postcode etc.

I was going to get my own cash till but I decided against it