Shopping Cart + Payment Gateway Providers

[Kev-G]

Hi All,

First-time poster - Been a lucker for sometime...

Looking for some recommendations for both Shopping Cart and Payment Gateway providers.

Cheers,

Kev.

[jamesuk28]

Depends what you want:

cubecart 3 is free
cubecart 4 costs about £120

oscommerce is free

Gateways

PayPal is quick and easy
Nochex allows credit cards and debit cards but will cost a one off fee of £50 if you process more than £100 per day.

[timskipper]

Also a note on NOCHEX, whilst they are a good service (I use them in several places) thats very simple to operate, once you open a full merchant account (which you need for >£100 or non-uk payments) the minimum retained value is equal to whatever the maximum payment limit you set.

For example, I've said we'll take nothing more than £300 in one transaction, therefore they've got £300 of our cash and won't give it back until 6 months after I close the account.

PayPal doesn't do this; but PayPal are utter c&nts (IMO).

[skymaster]

I currently use Zen Cart http://www.zencart.com/ combined with Pro TX as a payment gateway. It also intergrates paypal as well but only as a secondary option. A security certificate is required as well. The site we use it all on is http://www.regencychess.co.uk/ which sells a range of chess sets.

[timskipper]

skymaster said:

I currently use Zen Cart http://www.zencart.com/ combined with Pro TX as a payment gateway. It also intergrates paypal as well but only as a secondary option. A security certificate is required as well.

ProtX is just a payment gateway though, you will still need an Internet approved credit card Merchant Account to sit behind it from your bank or someone like Streamline (I have mentioned this elsewhere but if you're an FSB member then Streamline is ridiculously cheap).

Tim

[skymaster]

timskipper said:

skymaster said:

I currently use Zen Cart http://www.zencart.com/ combined with Pro TX as a payment gateway. It also intergrates paypal as well but only as a secondary option. A security certificate is required as well.

ProtX is just a payment gateway though, you will still need an Internet approved credit card Merchant Account to sit behind it from your bank or someone like Streamline (I have mentioned this elsewhere but if you're an FSB member then Streamline is ridiculously cheap).

Tim

Yes you are right, you need a merchant account. My company banks with Barclays who gave us good rates and low set up costs for a merchant account, I think they brand the service as 'Barclaycard Business' and confusingly use the same logos as they do for the personal credit cards called barclaycards. Also got a real life terminal as well for phone orders... there are still plenty of people who still insist on calling to make their purchase.

Paypal can be a nightmare... we only use it because most of our sales are fairly low value so if we lose one to a charge back I wont lose any sleep over it. Paypal makes it so easy for the buyer to claw their money back and then the seller has to enter an experience thats like dealing with a malfunctioning vending machine. Often sellers fax paypal proof of postage, delivery signature proof etc etc only for the buyer to still be awarded their funds back.

[timskipper]

skymaster said:

Paypal makes it so easy for the buyer to claw their money back and then the seller has to enter an experience thats like dealing with a malfunctioning vending machine. Often sellers fax paypal proof of postage, delivery signature proof etc etc only for the buyer to still be awarded their funds back.

You are not wrong! I love the malfunctioning vending machine analogy, it's so true.

I had my company PayPal account terminated because they considered a transaction "suspicious". It was a commission payment to my company from SEDO for some parked domain advertising. Much the same as the commission payment from SEDO for some domain advertising I'd received umpteen times before which was apparently not "suspicious".

They demanded proof of postage for this item. Ummm.... when I pointed out the blindingly obvious to anyone with half a brain (PayPals own transaction record clearly stated what it was for), they terminated the account because I couldn't provide it!

I used to be a big fan of PayPal and their merchant account (the Payments Pro virtual terminal was excellent for MOTO) as I'd had a couple of years easy business through them. But it took one fecking idiot to ruin the whole lot. I would not touch them with a sh!tty stick now.

[skymaster]

timskipper said:

skymaster said:

Paypal makes it so easy for the buyer to claw their money back and then the seller has to enter an experience thats like dealing with a malfunctioning vending machine. Often sellers fax paypal proof of postage, delivery signature proof etc etc only for the buyer to still be awarded their funds back.

You are not wrong! I love the malfunctioning vending machine analogy, it's so true.

I had my company PayPal account terminated because they considered a transaction "suspicious". It was a commission payment to my company from SEDO for some parked domain advertising. Much the same as the commission payment from SEDO for some domain advertising I'd received umpteen times before which was apparently not "suspicious".

They demanded proof of postage for this item. Ummm.... when I pointed out the blindingly obvious to anyone with half a brain (PayPals own transaction record clearly stated what it was for), they terminated the account because I couldn't provide it!

I used to be a big fan of PayPal and their merchant account (the Payments Pro virtual terminal was excellent for MOTO) as I'd had a couple of years easy business through them. But it took one fecking idiot to ruin the whole lot. I would not touch them with a sh!tty stick now.

Yes, many pay pal users have an experience like yours. Paypal are owned by ebay which figures..... All it takes is for one jobsworth at their end to push a button and your account is history. There is no reasoning with them once they have decided what they want to do.

Back in 1997 it was socially acceptable for internet companies to behave like this. We excused them because of the vastness of the virtual world. In 2008 however even the largest of internet companies are expected to behave like real businesses and have a good footing in the real world of customer service and real world laws. Ebay and paypal just dont seem to have caught up and still think it's fine to send someone a sensless automated response to situations involving fraud and the like.