I’m starting an internet business and will need to accept credit card payments. Should I use something like paypal or should I just get my own merchant account and payment gateway? From my initial testing, my sales look very promising and I’m expecting a lot of business.
Hi. I had the same decision to make when I was starting my online business so I know what problems you are facing.
At first I used paypal, but then my sales were increasing very quickly and I knew I needed to switch to a merchant account/payment gateway setup to handle the larger volume.
I came across this website, http://www.electronictransferservice.com and they really helped me learn a lot. There’s plenty of information on their pages and I discovered so much about how all this works with processing credit cards. Their FAQ section is definitely worth a look.
I’m not recommending you sign up with them in anyway, but I did contact them and was able to get all my questions about merchant credit card processing answered from a real live person. That was pretty cool.
I eventually went with a different company, but at least I was armed with much more knowledge than when I first started.
I’m thankful to say that my business and sales have been doing well and making the switch was, to me, a good choice. You’ll have to determine for yourself if and when you will make the switch.
One thing though, if your volume of sales is not enough to cover the costs of processing fees, then I would go with paypal and just wait till it does.
Hope that helps and good luck!