I was thinking about setting up the usage of credit cards as a method of payment but wondered if all of the fees that will be incurred would be worth it. I really don't want to raise my prices to cover them unless I have to. Right now I accept PayPal but a few have asked about credit cards.

Chris

From what I understand, it is pretty expensive to accept credit cards. Maybe it would be a good idea to poll your current clients to see what their views are.

The fee to accept credit cards is a question of how much you need to offer that option. If most people want to use a credit card then the fees may very well be worth it to draw in customers, if most people are willing to use Paypal (funded by their credit card or otherwise) then it may not be worth it. I don't recall the charge for Paypal payments funded by a credit card, but I don't recall it being so much I would refuse a credit card payment on Ebay.

The fee's would depend on the processor you are using. Your best bet is to do your research at various different processors.

Third party processors, such as 2Checkout, charger around 5% plus a small transaction fee. It's a couple of percent higher than Paypal, however, unlike merchant accounts there are no monthly fees.

Your customer also has to go to a 3rd party page to process the order, with a proper merchant account they can do it right from your site which looks much more professional.

They are usually pretty expensive but most of the time they depend on how much transactions you do, usually the more you do the cheaper it is (in a way, tiered pricing most of the time).

I suppose it depends on how tight your margins are. We accept both PayPal and credit cards via 2checkout, and we keep our pricing the same for either option. 2checkout is a little more expensive than PayPal, but I'd say our orders are split 50-50 between PayPal and credit card customers... so I think the expense is well worth it.

Hi Chris13,
PayPal accepts credit cards without needing and account now, which some customers prefer. The rates are also a lot cheaper without monthly fees. Sure, the payment gateway takes you to the PayPal secure site, but most customers seem to like the added security. The PayPal option works well for me at the moment.

All the best with your business.

There are different merchant acounts you can get, and different online gateways you can use to accept CC's. I would check and see what your budget is for this before hand, check a couple of places and their fees to see whats right for you to start off with.

YES. If you are going to last as a business you MUST work to accept the fees that come along with billing credit card.

NOW, as to what they cost it depends. If you have quite a few clients, its actually CHEAPER than other billing methods. IE look up a company called ECHO. The initial costs are a lot but the per transaction costs of a true CC processor are not as high as other methods such as paypal.

Now if you want to stay small paypal has a new service called PAYPAL PRO which allowed you to accept credit cards without people havign paypal accounts. That is also an option.

If you are using Paypal then you are also accepting Credit Cards. Because your customers don't need to have a paypal account to make to you, they can use their credit cards.