Overwhelmed by the # of merch accts!

[dabbledoya]

I'm just now starting to sell locally to co-workers/family, etc, and have a mini catalog for mail order being made up as we speak.

From the consumer end, I know I like using my cc for purchases, so it seems natural to offer that to customers.

After researching this board, plus some on the internet, I'm overwhelmed w/ the number of merchant accts!

Propay seems the easiest for me as far as just starting out, but the first of the year I'll be looking into a website--and hopefully have one up by spring (this is the plan, anyway lol!).

From what I've read about them, it doesn't sound like they would integrate into a shopping cart??

I know zero about websites/shopping carts, etc--can anyone give me some advice on a merchant acct that is reasonable for upstart, but would also integrate nicely for a website?

Thanks

[silkysoycreations]

I have no helpful advice as I'm in the same boat as you but will be following this thread to see what feedback you get back on it. I'm working on finding a hosting site that offers easy ecommerce as well for a reasonable price.

[thesoapbox]

I am with wahmshoppes for my website and many of the women that use wahmshoppes also use Propay on their website and their shopping cart. So I am sure you could use it on your website

Angi

[prairieannie]

I initially PM'd dabbledoya with this information, but since there are other people looking as well, I will tell you how it works with our sites.

I believe many other sites work this same way..

If your website is set up to accept credit cards, the site will gather the information for you. It will provide the fields for your customers to fill in such as name, address, cc number, experiation date, etc. etc. Your site will collect the information and you then take the info and manually run the card when you get it. Many of our clinets use Propay and this is how it works for them. I can only speak for our sites, but as I said before, I do believe that many others, if they are set up to accept Credit cards as a form of payment will work the same way.

There are other programs that will integrate with websites, and will actually verify funds, and accept or deny charges immediately, however Propay to my knowledge isn't one of them.. at least not the basic Propay. I'm not sure if there are more than just the basic plans available.

I hope this helps some.

[dabbledoya]

Thank you for your responses!

It sounds like Propay is a pretty good deal, and simple enough--especially for starting out. I actually like the idea of manually entering the info myself--being the control freak that I am lol!

Also, I'm sure the more bells and whistles you get (i.e., automatic verification, etc), the more the monthly fee would be. I don't need all that for now.

Again--thanks for the advice!

[thesoapbox]

Here is info on how to add it but that is using the cart that is used with the host I use, but I am posting it to show it is pretty easy to add...

Once you have activiated your Propay account-

In your feature cart go to- Payments> check the featurecart CCCS option (you will also have to set up a password as well).

it should then show up as an option upon checkout.

When you see someone has checked out using CCCS- you login to the

FC-CCCS to copy the information and enter it into Propay's site.

Angi

[kandlekrazy]

One thing to consider is that manually running #'s is usually a higher charge than having the actual cc to swipe...not sure about ProPay but most of the ones I looked into for another business were this way.