As a follow-up to this post: http://answers.onstartups.com/questions/615/what-is-the-best-merchant-processing-solution what are some merchants that people have had a good experience with.
I am starting the company in Jamaica, and need to be able to accept both US-based credit cards (the majors - Visa, AMEX, Discover, Mastercard, etc.) and local/international credit cards.
I know Paypal is the obvious first choice, but are there other options, if so what has been people's experiences?
The payment is for a service - web app actually - so no shipping needed. It would be preferable if the solution can be integrated into my website so the customer doesn't have to leave - and we can setup recurring billing. There a way to integrate - perhaps via an API to the payment processor - that allows us to store their credit card but not on our servers so we can bill them monthly?
Thanks.
Global Collect has always been referenced as the most ubiquitous and complete international payments solution for non-US markets. http://www.globalcollect.com/ I'm not sure if it's the right answer for Jamaica.
I'm curious, why not PayPal? Their new open API means that other services are plugging into the platform; creating countless other features and benefits that you won't find elsewhere.
WorldPay has been in the business for quite a long time, has a nice offering at a reasonable price and is now owned and backed by RBS.
I live in Brazil and have been using FastSpring successfully for over a year now. Very easy to integrate and customize. Great support. I'm not sure they have recurring billing, though.
PayPal won't give you the users' credit card numbers and do the recurring billing for you. You may also take a look into Google Checkout and Amazon Payments. They all charge very similar rates. PayPal is probably the best now.
Merchant account is much more hassle and costs. It is reasonable to setup only if you are going to receive a lot of money to the account.
Try Plimus. They offer a typical set of payment options (cards, wire transfer, purchase orders, etc). They also have a nice instant notification feature which will call a page on your website when order is processed (so you can create a user account or send a download link). They also support recurring payments so motnhly billing would be easy. We are using them at the moment.
Ive always preferred opening an internet merchant account with a local bank. Most if not all banks over here provide their own payment gateway solution with various API's etc to plug in with. If thats not an option then I would look at PayPal, Amazon etc
Most payment processors offer some sort of API to plugin to your cart/application, I cant imagine one that wouldn't.