ACCEPTING ON-LINE PAYMENTS |
Web Marketing Technologies recommends using a PayPal Premier Business
Account as the most elegant, cost-effective method of processing and accepting
payment for products or services sold through one of our supported web sites.
|
| In
making that determination Web Marketing Technologies considered several
factors covering the entire purchase transaction process. This write up
will concentrate on the cost considerations that most directly affect you,
our clients. In doing the study, for the sake of simplicity, we based monthly
costs on the scenario of 10 transactions per month, each transaction in
the amount of $100. We also looked at a number of other issues that we will
touch upon later in this article as we describe the web-enabled transaction
process. |
| Several
studies have shown that the single most important factor potential buyers
on the World Wide Web consider is the security of their transactions when
they enter credit card or similar information into a purchase system. By
using PayPal, with its rapidly growing name brand recognition, you provide
your visitors with the sense of security they need to go ahead and make
that purchase. Although Web Marketing Technologies offers a secure server
service the reality is that we don't enjoy nearly the same name recognition
that PayPal offers. |
| From
its inception PayPal has held the position of low cost leader combined with
full transaction authentication and financial transfer functionality. One
of the biggest benefits PayPal offers is that you, the client, need not
have a merchant account. Using our $1000 per month transaction schedule
we mentioned earlier PayPal would cost $25 for that month. Since PayPal
does not require you to have your own, separate merchant account you don't
have the additional transaction fees charged by the merchant account itself.
PayPal also has no initiation or setup fee which is rare for this kind of
service and another significant cost saving. |
| Another
service Web Marketing Technologies considered, CyberCash's Cash Register
Service, has a flat monthly fee of $20. They also charge $0.20 per transaction
so using our 10 transactions per month scenario the total monthly service
charge comes to $22. CyberCash charges a $495 setup fee and they also require
you to have your own merchant account in advance. This increases both the
initial costs and the monthly charge. |
| Excite,
the web portal, also offers a payment system called StoreBuilder. Their
setup fee is lower than CyberCash at only $49. Excite StoreBuilder also
expects you to bring your own merchant account with you so those fees apply
as well. The monthly fee for the Excite service using our scenario comes
to $27.80 but they have an additional monthly service fee of $19.95 plus
some miscellaneous charges bringing the monthly rate up to around $50. |
| While
doing the research for this article Web Marketing Technologies looked at
over two dozen secure transaction systems ranging from completely customizable
programs to "shrink wrapped" solutions. The three sited above
were the best of their classes. As an added bonus to the criteria we used
in the cost analysis PayPal even allows your buyer to pay by check or bank
account transfer. Neither of these pay options could we find in any other
system. For simple store fronts with less than 1000 transaction per month
we recommend a PayPal Premier Business account. We will be happy to set
it up for you. |
