At the beginning of my on-line career, I struggled for many months to find a low-cost credit card processor. The whole market seemed shut to anyone who was not a US citizen. Of course, there was no problem in principle, in approaching one of the big UK providers, but in those days, the fees were very steep, and even then there were plenty of hoops to jump through. Like most small business people, I did not want to fork out loads of money on getting an account with one of the big names, when I had no idea how quickly the on-line revenue would build. After much searching, I eventually found 2checkout. What a relief! They took $45.00 off me, and within no more than 10 minutes. I had a test page working that could take... MONEY!
What is really amazing about 2co, is that they have an online forum, where all the members can chat about any issues or problems they might have. Sometimes these posts take the form of people asking for, or offering advice, but sometimes people post complaints about the service. To my surprise, I found that the forum moderators did not remove the complaints as long as they were polite and genuine, with no swear words. How many other companies do you know, who host a forum that lists all the negative stuff about their own service? That was one of the reasons why I stuck with them, even when they went through quite a difficult patch when they moved their servers on to new and faster computers. There was also quite a disruption caused by a couple of DDoS attacks. They may not be perfect, but I can honestly say they are nice guys. One thing you will soon learn if you are new to the on-line money business is that there are sharks out there, and they have no trouble sleeping at night.
Having done all the experimentation already, here are exact instructions on how to set up with them, including how to get the money transferred to your UK bank account.
1)Click this link, and join up.
2)Either set up your item in the online shop provided, or use code like the following, which lets you pay me $45.00!
The code:
<
form action="https://www.2checkout.com/cgi-bin/sbuyers/cartpurchase.2c" method="post" target="_blank">The Result:
By calling https://www.2checkout.com/cgi-bin/sbuyers/cartpurchase.2c, you can send any monetary value you want to your account, you could even let the user fill in a form, with a user-typeable amount.
3)Set up your bank details.
This is the interesting bit! You will need to phone your bank, and get three pieces of information from them. (Unless you are willing to have them post you a cheque, all the way from USA, which they do not recommend)
a)The swift code for your bank.
b)Your banks' "corresponding bank" in New York (sometimes called a corespondent bank)
c)The corresponding banks' routing code.
Question a) should not tax them too hard, but questions b) & c) can only be answered by someone who has knowledge of international money transfers. My bank took 24hrs to get back to me with this info. Don't be put, off, just try to speak to the right person, or phone head office.
Set a "release level". This is the amount of money you will allow 2CO to accumulate, before they pay you. The higher you set it, the less you pay in wire fees. At the time of writing, 2CO do not charge at all if you set your release level to over $1,200, but your own bank may still pass on a small charge! When I first started, I set my release level to the minimum, which is $100. Over a third of the money went in fees! But I was ecstatic... my first taste of cyber-money.
Of course, there need not be any wire fees if you use a UK Merchant Provider, but I have not yet found one that does not have a hefty joining fee, as well as an annual or monthly "maintenance fee". As a beginner, I was willing to pay these wire fees, because they only occurred if I got sent money.
The above information should be sufficient for most webmaster/business owners to get started, when used with the very adequate online help on 2CO's pages. However, we offer a setup service for those who have better things to do with their time. Please contact us discuss the matter further.
Ironically, now that the on-line business has proved itself, we are looking at getting an additional account with one of the bigger players, because they have certain facilities that 2CO do not make available. Also some of the other companies look more favorably on your application if you can show previous transaction statements; - catch 22 I think they call it. Well now I have those statements, thanks to my time with 2checkout.
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