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If you are planning on selling products online or are already in the process, you may find beneficial the following reviews of credit card payment processors. I have experienced with several credit card payment processors and below you will find the advantages and disadvantages that I’ve been able to experience with PayPal, 2Checkout and PayJunction.

Disclaimer: These reviews are based on the experience of the author as a user of these services and are to be used for educational purposes only. The author is not to be responsible for any incidents arising from the reader as a result of these reviews.

With that out of the way, here are the facts that I faced about each of the three credit card payment processors:

1) 2Checkout (2C):
My Overall Rating: 3/10
- advantages:

• ———- no monthly gateway or statement fee
• ———- deposits money automatically into bank account
• ———- customer does not need to create account with 2C to pay for products

- dissadvantages:

• ———- hard to get someone on the phone for emergency tech support
• ———- setup fee of $49 (this may be different now, please check latest)
• ———- high per transaction fees of $0.45 + 5.5% (at least it was, check for latest figures)
• ———- deposits are made biweekly to your bank account (at least it used to be, check for this)
• ———- (this is why I said enough with 2Checkout)do not allow you to charge your customers cards, so if your customers call to place orders and provide you with their credit card number over the phone, I think that it is a violation of 2C’s policy for you to charge your customers card yourself. Your customers have to be the ones inputting their card numbers.

2) PayPal:
My Overall Rating: 7/10
- advantages:

• ———- FREE and easy to setup
• ———- no monthly gateway or statement fee
• ———- considerable low per transaction fees ($0.30 + 2.9%, again be sure to check latest) compared to 2C
• ———- provides an ATM card

- disadvantages:

• ———- hard to get someone on the phone for emergency tech support
• ———- you have to manually instruct it to deposit money into your bank account (I’m not aware of an auto deposit, but you can check)
• ———- money takes about 3 days to appear in your bank account, after you manually request the transfer
• ———- (this is why I said enough with PayPal)I was experiencing their system being down for maintenance around mid night very frequently, so I felt that my visitors were being denied from paying for their orders on something I had no control over.
• ———- Buyers were required to create accounts with PayPal. Some of my clients would report to me that some of them would not buy because of this, while others reported they would not buy because they could not remember their PayPal account information for subsequent purchases (we can tell the clients to click on the “forgot password” link, but is still an additional unnecessary step from the store owner’s behalf)

I still use PayPal to pay for certain things, but not as my main merchant provider for my e-Commerce sites.

I finally had enough with PayPal and decided to try a real merchant provider and my sales went up almost instantly, inspire of the monthly gateway + statement fees. Most people get attracted to 2Checkout and PayPal because there is no monthly service fee. For starters this could be very convenient.

My current merchant account provider is Card Payment Solutions (http://www.csiprocessing.com) and the credit card payment provider they assigned me to is:

3) Pay Junction (payJunction.com)
My Overall Rating: 10/10
- advantages:

• ———- a real person picks up the phone for tech supports
• ———- are willing to accommodate for custom e-commerce programming needs. I developed my own e-commerce system and they worked with me till the end to get it working properly with their system. (I was very pleased about this)
• ———- you can charge your customers credit cards directly on their secure web-system. This is beneficial for those businesses that get orders by phone. This is also very convenient for customers who call your business from a print ad, such as brochure or product catalog.
• ———- low per transaction fees. It could go below 2% and around $0.10 - $0.20 per transaction if I recall correctly.
• ———- customer does not need to create account with PayJunction to pay for products
• ———- oh, before I forget, they batch the transactions daily so the money is in your bank account usually within 2 days.

- disadvantages:

• ———- the nightmare of every starter, monthly gateway + statement fees, which I don’t mind,  considering that I’m selling more than I was with PayPal and 2C

The verdict:

Of course I also played around with other credit card payment processors such as iBill, but these are my top 3. Currently here is how I use each one of these providers:

- PayJunction: for serious e-commerce business
- PayPal: for occasional payments to certain people and for those clients that would rather use the monthly fees of a real merchant account for other business expenses or have low sales volume.
- 2Checkout: a thing of the passed for me. I’ll probably consider it, as a substitute for my PayPal activities, if PayPal goes out of business, which is very unlikely.

__________________
Jorge Garifuna
Professional Web Developer
“Your Web Solution Partner”
http://www.GariDigital.com

About the author:

Jorge Garifuna is a Computer Scientist and Real Estate professional, who loves to serve his Garifuna community. Jorge has served as vice-president of former New York-based, Garifuna youth organization, Lileiti Dufigati, has been the president to Los Angeles-based, Garifuna organization, SONHOCA, and holds membership with various Garifuna organizations, such as Wafadaha Uwara, and national technology organizations, such as ACM and IEEE. Jorge has donated his time to lecture classes about Computer & Internet usage for Garifuna organizations like, MUGAMA. Additionally, Jorge has trained high school students in programming, for national competition, under the BDPA-LA organization.

Jorge is also the CEO of Garinet Global Inc. Garinet has established itself as the major Garifuna Network since it launched in 1999. It currently averages over one million hits per month from over one hundred different countries around the world.

Garinet has consistently created services to enhance the future of the Garifuna community. Through its GariDigital.com website, Garinet offers the general public, a multitude of Website services for organizations, businesses, entertainers and family members.

To stay updated with Jorge’s latest development, you may visit his official website, Jgari.com:
http://www.Jgari.com

Jorge may be contacted by email at jg@garinet.com