accepting credit cards II (non swipers)

[The Vector Doctor]

I am going to start a new thread as the old one is 90% in favor of mobile swiping (square, gopayment, etc), Not my situation.

100% of my transactions are keyed in manually via a virtual terminal. I use merchant warehouse and I seem to be paying way too much

If you google for a site you thousands of companies that all claim to be the cheapest so I would rather hear from someone who has first hand experience

My rates are NOT consistent. They vary widely depending on the card types and they use terms like qualified, non qualified, etc on my statement. I also have a batch header fee, monthly service fee for both AMEX and a separate one for mc/visa/discover. I imagine commercial cards are a different rate than personal.

I cannot be the only one here who is at or near 100% keyed in transactions. I NEVER have a card in hand to swipe

So for those who have a setup similar to mine, who do you use?

 

[binki]

We use first data from sams club but we are b/m so most of our transactions are swiped. If we key in we get an extra whack on the fees, something around 1%.

 

[Jillbeans]

I just use PayPal.
I get about 10 CC orders a year.
No hand-held anything.
Love....Jill

 

[ThinkRight]

I just use PayPal.
I get about 10 CC orders a year.
No hand-held anything.
Love....Jill

Is that Baby New Year

 

[The Vector Doctor]

i do 150-300 keyed in transactions per month

 

[2B]

have you contacted INTUIT? they will price match other providers and having the processing work seamlessly with QuickBooks outweighs the extra fees for us

all the extra fees that you listed for, qualified, non qualified, commercial, AMEX, keyed / swiped, etc... are to my understanding going to be with any merchant service provider

 

[The Vector Doctor]

I don't use intuit/quickbooks

 

[wildside]

I just switched from merchant warehouse myself for same reasons. Their fees are out of control, 2012 averaged 4.9% per swipe is what I just figured up.

I switched to square. 2.75% whether swiped or keyed and claim to be no other fees. We probably key in 30% of the cards but dont matter as the fee is the same.

We like it so far, tried gopayment first and hated it.

Square even has it where you can key in online as opposed to a mobile device

 

[yukon]

We switched to square over a year ago because of the outrageous fees with our old merchant. We are charged 2.75% swiped and 3.5% keyed but no other fees at all. Deposits to our bank account next day. Very convenient can use on the road via phone & ipad. No paper receipts to file. You'll need to request a higher non swipe weekly limit for next day deposit (i think they start you out with $1000 weekly limit)

Yukon

 

[Flame]

Intuit works well for me. Even if you don't swipe, their rates have been very consistent. I'm still new with them (couple months) but have liked what I have seen so far! No BS, no confusing 4 page statements, no varying rates.

 

[SignStudent]

While I don't have a specific suggestion I will say that you should look into getting set up for "interchange plus" rates. Sounds like you're on a tiered system which means you're probably paying higher rates than you should. Just do a google search and you'll find lots of info on why the tiered system is outdated and overpriced.

 

[OldPaint]

heres a thought, i may be crazy but, since your doing direct transfers(no swipe). set up an account at your bank, and when a client wishes to pay with card, have them do the input to your account. and then you would need to go to that open account to the public, and move funds deposited to your secure business account. kinda like when i buy something on line. they never see my card, but i give my card #, expire date, security code & type of card. seems this would work better for you. could set it up on your web page.

 

[Typestries]

Eric, I'm with you on almost all transactions non-swipe. We use authorize.net, which is the payment gateway, not the processor. It connects to the processor, which in our case is EXS merchant services. Given our volume and history, we are at 2.125 plus affinity charges, which is pretty good considering nearly every trans. is "card not present" which the CC industry charges a premium for. Averaged out monthly, its basically 2.78 %
Using authorize.net allows us to process cards directly in our order management system, and very soon our online backend built on magento.

 

[TresL]

Same here Rick. I've been using it with VirtueMart for a couple years now.
But, hand 75% over the phone.

Another tip...
ONLY use it for US based transactions with a min. of ZIP verify.

 

[CES020]

We have used Authorize.net for years now, and while it's very good, having to key in all the data they want is slow. They want the billing address of the card, blah blah blah. You key it all in, hit the enter button, you get the "you forget to enter one field" error and it wipes it all out and you have to type it all in again.

When we got square, we figured we wouldn't use it much at all, since historically, we hadn't done much via credit card. However, we were very wrong. We use it all the time for no card present transactions. If it's in the $1000 range or less, we'll use square. If it's over that, then we start to learn towards using authorize.net.

Having said all that, I have used Authorize.net for a long time now, before the sign business in other ventures, and we've never had a problem with them. I think they are clearing ours through e-onlinedata.

If we have no transactions through them in a month, I think the billing for them is about $35 total. $25 from one place, $10 from another, or something like that.

 

[The Vector Doctor]

does authorize.net require your own type of software to work? Or is it a virtual terminal? I do all my authorizations through a virtual terminal provided by Merchant Warehouse

Yes I key in all info manually for each transaction, including #, exp date and billing address

 

[CES020]

does authorize.net require your own type of software to work? Or is it a virtual terminal? I do all my authorizations through a virtual terminal provided by Merchant Warehouse

Yes I key in all info manually for each transaction, including #, exp date and billing address

It's a virtual terminal.

 

[omgsideburns]

From what I remember of authorize.net (been five years), besides being gateway (our website pinged it for payments), we could log directly in to the site and manually key in payments.

 

[The Vector Doctor]

I would rather buy a new car than shop for card processors. They all claim to be the lowest but it seems there are so many fees that show up after signing up.

I found out that Costco's/Evalon's virtual terminal is $5/month and $149 initial setup. Since Merchant Warehouse knows I want to leave they are reviewing my rates to see where they can save me

And my last statement shows a new yearly Star Network Fee.

So for those of you that have a virtual terminal... did you pay any initial setup? I recall my fee through MW was $49

 

[webguru]

Might take a look here:

http://www.payanywhere.com/features