How can your customers pay you with credit cards or echecks online? How can you accept credit card payments on your web site or blog? How do you accept online payments without a merchant account?
The vast majority of online customers will pay by credit card, debit card, electronic check or PayPal. Very few people will mail a check or money order. If you are not accepting credit cards online via a secured server, you will lose sales. You should accept as many card types and payments methods as you can.
To accept online payments, you’ll typically need a merchant account, a payment gateway and a shopping cart. (I'll show you below how you can receive online payments without needing a merchant account).
A shopping cart collects the payment information, communicates with the payment processor and gateway, verifies that the credit card or echeck is good, and returns the authorization or denial to your site. This all happens almost instantly.
Shopping carts provide you with code to create Buy Now and Add To Cart buttons. The shopping cart can calculate the shipping calculation, sales tax and shipping cost.
You create a button by providing a description, price and other information such as shipping cost and sales tax. The system then provides a code that you paste in your web page to create the purchase button.
The buyer clicks on your button to purchase and pays you directly through your Paypal, Stripe, your own merchant account or other payment processor. The server verifies the info and redirects to the thank you page. The system automatically sends your custom message to the buyer.
There are several easy ways to accept instant, secure online payments.
First, you'll have to decide whether you want to get your own merchant account or not and if you quality to get a merchant account. To quality for a merchant account, you need good credit and they don't accept all types of businesses (although they are more flexible today than they used to be a few years ago).
You'll have to pay monthly fees for both the merchant account and the software you'll need to process the payments.
Below I'm mentioning easy solutions that allow you to take payments online without having your own merchant account.
How to Receive Payments Online
and Accept Credit Cards Online
Without a Merchant Account
Third party providers allow you to take payments online without having your own merchant account and without paying monthly fees. They provide you with a shopping cart and a secure site where your customers can place orders. You receive your payment from the provider instead of from a bank or financial institution.
Popular Third Party Payment Processors
PayPal
- You should accept PayPal payments if you’re selling services or products online even you’re accepting other payment methods or have your own merchant account as it’s a popular payment method that many people online are familiar with.
- No sign-up fees.
- No monthly fees.
- Low transaction fees: 2.9% of sales + $0.30 per transaction.
- You can transfer money into your bank account and the money goes into your account within approximately 4 business days.
- Sign up for a free Paypal account here.
Stripe
Stripe has become one of the most popular ways to accept payments online. Stripe provides dozens of payment methods and 135+ currencies. This makes it easy to reach new markets abroad and you can increase conversions by adding your customers’ preferred way of paying.
Stripe is one of the most customizable payment gateways, enabling you to fully customize and embed a sleek checkout into your website.
Stripe Checkout is a prebuilt, hosted payment page optimized for conversion. Stripe Checkout helps you to easily and securely accept payments online – from one-time purchases to subscriptions. It dynamically adapts to your customer’s device and location to increase conversion, and supports coupons, tax rates, and more.
Stripe’s top feature is Stripe Billing, which lets you set up recurring bills or one-time invoices quickly and easily.
- No sign-up fees.
- No monthly fees.
- Low transaction fees: 2.9% of sales + $0.30 per transaction.
Square
You can use Square to receive online payments and in-person payments.
- Accept all major credit cards, PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Square Pay, and Cash App Pay.
- Square Online Checkout lets you sell and accept payments online – no website required. Share links, buttons, or QR codes almost anywhere.
- Square also offers an easy-to-use store builder to build an eCommerce site.
- Enjoy no fees for refunds or chargebacks, free fraud protection, dispute management services, and more.
- Access your money instantly with Square Checking or transfer to your bank account as soon as the next business day.
- Fees are different for swiped payments, manual transactions and online payments.
- There are many different payment types and payment plans but they range from 2.6% to 2.9% transaction fee + 10 to 30 cents per transaction.
Amazon Pay
Amazon Pay is an online payment service that makes checkout on your site fast and secure for hundreds of millions of Amazon customers around the world.
Similar to PayPal, Amazon Pay is a digital payment processing service that allows customers to pay online using their Amazon payment methods on third party websites.
Amazon Pay is a service offered to Amazon customers. Anyone who has an Amazon account can use Amazon Pay wherever they see the Amazon Pay button when checking out on online stores. There are no additional sign-ups or sign-ins which means that they don’t need to create a new account or remember old passwords. Amazon Pay simply uses the information and payment methods stored in your Amazon account.
Payment can be tracked in their Amazon account.
Amazon doesn't not share the buyer's full credit card, debit card, or bank account number with sites or organizations that accept Amazon Pay. The merchant only receives information that is required to complete and support your transaction. This information may include your name, email address, and shipping address.
- Amazon Pay accepts credit and debit cards.
- Buyers don't need to create a new account or enter new information on your site.
- Merchants can enable features like recurring payments, let customers shop with their voice using Alexa, and much more.
- Fees: 1.9% + 30 cents for domestic U.S. transactions. Learn more about Amazon Pay fees here.
More Ways to Accept Payment
Clickbank
I've been using Clickbank for about 15 years as a vendor, buyer and affiliate.
- Clickbank used to specialize in downloadable products such as ebooks and software but you can now also sell physical products.
- Clickbank accepts credit cards, online checks and PayPal payments.
- Delivery – You must create a web page for every product you sell on Clickbank. There can be a potential problem if buyers close the browser before downloading the product and this could result in a refund request. Personally, I found that this does not happen often and Clickbank will get in touch with you if a buyer contacts them about problems. (Some customers expect email delivery.)
- You get a check in the mail from Clickbank from your sales every 2 weeks.
- Clickbank gives buyers a 60 day guarantee. You can use that as a selling point and make buyers feel more comfortable.
- Advantage: Offers a build-in affiliate program with a lot of exposure of affiliates who are looking to promote products. You receive exposure through a free listing on their website and through the search facilities of other websites. You decide what commission you want to pay your affiliates.
- No monthly fees.
- Disadvantage: High transaction fee.
- $49.95 activation fee when your first products is approved. There is no fee if you're not approved.
- $1 per transaction + 7.5% of sales. ClickBank fee rate for transactions made with PayPal is 5.0%. See more info about their fees here.
- There is a $2.50 pay period processing fee for every payment that is issued to clients. If you want to receive fewer payments from ClickBank to lower your total fees, you can adjust your payment threshold (the amount of money that must be in your account before ClickBank issues a payment).
E-Junkie
E-Junkie is a popular and inexpensive shopping cart and is a great option for newbies.
- E-junkie lets you sell both electronic and physical products. They automate and secure the digital delivery of files.
- Offers a delivery mechanism to sell your digital products, instant downloads, real-time credit card processing
- E-junkie's built-in shopping cart integrates with PayPal.
- Provides powerful tools for creating a shopping cart, upselling, digital delivery and secure downloads.
- They also teach you how to code carts to change their look or turn them into a text link.
- Setting up affiliate programs is easy.
Advantages:
- Upsell – it lets you create a shopping cart and upsell other products. If yo're going to use upsells, this is a good, low-cost option.
- Delivery – You don't have to create a web page. E-junkie sends buyers an email with a link to the product. This saves time for sellers and is less confusing to buyers.
- Flexible and easy to use (easier to set up than Clickbank).
- You can easily create discounts, make them expire, change prices, offer affiliate deals and more.
Disadvantage:
- Offers no guarantee to customers.
Fees:
- There is a flat monthly fee starting at $5/mo for up to 10 products (and higher if you have more than 10 products).
- There are no transaction fees or other fees.
NOTE: I haven't used it personally to sell but I'm familiar with their system as a buyer and as an affiliate. I find their system user friendly for buyers. I also find good affiliate products there.
PayLoadz vs E-Junkie
- PayLoadz provides an ecommerce platform that allows users to sell digital items.
- PayLoadz places download limits and fees on the amount of sales you can make with their service (Ejunkie doesn't).
- Fees are higher than E-Junkie.
- You tend to get into the next higher price level whenever you get a spike in sales.
- Provides less bells and whistles compared E-Junkie.
Conclusion: E-Junkie provides more benefits at a lower cost.
Teachable – $29/month for the basic plan – $79 for the professional plan and $399 for the business plan.
This is a very popular plan for people selling courses.
Some of the benefits:
It's easy to set up.
- You don't need a payment processor. Teachable handles the payment processing for you, so you don’t need a separate processor. They accept credit card, debit card, and PayPal.
- You don't need a web host to put up your courses. Teachable hosts all your course content (even though, to your audience, it looks like you’re hosting it!)
- Upload as many courses, videos, PDFs, etc. as you like.
- Create engaging multimedia lectures.Add video, image, text, audio, and PDF files. Easily import content directly from Dropbox, Google Drive, or OneDrive.
- Build a beautiful website. You can work with your existing website or create new pages on Teachable, with their intuitive drag-and-drop builder.
- Use their domain or your own. Start with your own free domain (yourschool.teachable.com), host under your own domain name (yourschool.com), or link to a subdomain (school.yoursite.com).
Transaction fees:
- With Teachable, there are no setup fees. You can launch your school for free!
- When offering a free course, Teachable doesn't charge any fees on enrollments.
- When you sell a course or subscription, there are NO transaction fees for the business and professional plans. There is a 5% transaction for the basic plan.
- If you're using their Monthly Payment Gateway or Teachable Payments, they charge a standard payment processing fee of 2.9% + $0.30 on paid courses for US transactions. For international transactions, there is an additional processing fee of 1% for credit and debit cards, and 1.5% for PayPal.
If you're creating courses, you definitely should check out Teachable.
Advantages and disadvantages of third party providers
Advantages:
It’s easier and faster to use a third party provider. You don’t have to quality for a merchant account which typically involves having good credit. And you save the monthly fees for both the merchant account and the shopping cart.
Disadvantages:
- You don't have full control.
- You often don't get the payment immediately. E.g. It takes 4 days when transferring money from your Paypal account to get into your bank account. And Clickbank sends checks every 2 weeks.
- The transaction fees can be higher than you would pay when having your own merchant account but that's not always the case. For example, Clickbank fees are high but the fees from Google Wallet and Paypal are very low.
When you start generating enough sales, you can switch to a traditional merchant provider to save on transaction fees.
Get your own merchant account
When you start making enough sales, you’ll pay less transaction fees by having your own merchant account. You also have more control and you’ll get the money in your account right away.
You’ll typically pay an activation fee and monthly fees for both the merchant account and the shopping cart (approximately $30/month for each).
Shopping carts
It’s essential to accept credit cards when doing business online. Give your customers several different payment options to order your products or services. Some customers don’t have a credit card or don’t like to order online, so you still want to give them the option of sending you a money order (although few people will).
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