Sage or Paypal Pro - Whats the latest view?

[DillonsToybox.com]

Hi All,

I am debating whether or not to add in a payment processor so I can take card payments directly.

Currently I only have paypal and google and have lost a few customers at the cart, maybe because they only see those two options, but it could well be many other reasons!!

I don't have a long business history with my bank so don't think I can get merchant account at a HSBC so was thinking of going with either sage or paypal pro.

I have looked through many old posts and found various recommendations either way over time, and some people who maybe changed over time.

I was wondering;
1) what the current view is on the best option?
2) Has anyone got the sage with the sage merchant account? Is that expensive?
3) Will adding this really increase conversion?
Many thanks
Simon.

[thetoolboxshop]

Not 100% sure about HSBC criteria because it's been a while, but you should try and at least find out, I would go down that route until it's exhausted.

[ecoleman]

Without some sort of trading history you may find it a little more difficult to get a merchant account. I'm not saying impossible, but you will probably have to submit some sort of business plan and jump through a few more hoops. I know this because a friend of mine is trying to sort out a merchant account to use with SagePay right now. You will also need a business account as they will not transfer to a personal account.

PayPal Pro is reasonably hassle free to setup, costs £20/month, the same a SagePay, but your transaction fees will obviously be a bit higher than your traditional merchant account, but it's a good place to start and build up that important trading history for when you choose to move over to SagePay. When I started I went with Paypal Pro and I was up and running within 24 hours of application. To setup a merchant account and SagePay will probably take you a minimum of 2-3 weeks.

The customers does not see that they are using PayPal as the payment details are taken directly on your site (via iFrame).
When you use Paypal pro you are also forced to include the PayPal express option in the cart, but that's not really a bad thing as it gives your customers an option if they have a paypal account and separates your Paypal customers from your standard debit/credit card customers.

Answer to question 3: Yes it will increase conversion.
Not everybody has a Paypal/Google Account and many people will see sites that only have PP/Google as payment options as a mickey mouse operation.

[lancashireroseblinds]

We are still waiting for our sage pay account one month on. Like Elliot said, they make you jump through alot of hoops. We decided to go for an third option, while we wait. Nochex, set up fee of £25.00, no monthly fees, but there is a retained balance. I.E they hold a certain amount of funds, in case of charge backs. Not ideal but you can then take credit and debit cards. Set up took 4 hours.

[thetoolboxshop]

even when sagepay came through it was another month before we could use the 3d, i had to disable sagepay within a week because the fraudsters found the "chink" in our armour, and only enabled it when 3d was installed. (and only 3d is what we allow)

[jewelsandfinery]

We have always used a separate bank account for eBay, Amazon and then our website. So it was very easy to open a business account with the bank. Took an hour.
Used Paypal pro for our website along with Google until now which has worked very well. Just configure your payment page to say credit/debit cards rather than Paypal. The 3D took a bit of working out but its now fully implemented with Paypal.

Our merchant account and WorldPay processor has just come through. Took about 4 weeks but that's due to the fact that they sent forms that had a mistake on them the first time.

Haven't found any hoops or been particularly taxing. Its just been a natural process and one that I would recommend to anyone who is selling online for the first time or moving from Ebay/Amazon to their own website.

Get online first with Paypal Pro and then 6 months/12 months down the line when you have built up a good reputation and are ranking well in Google with regular conversions go for a better payment processor. But it is always a good idea to have more than the one though

[DillonsToybox.com]

Thanks all,

I will take the advice, which seems to be; start of with paypal pro then move over to a proper merchant account when possible.

I do already have a business account with HSBC so hopefully after 6 months or so I can move over to them.

Thanks again everyone for your responses,

Simon

[Pets4life]

Best to start with paypal pro, use it for a year and get some good order values in. you can then use your paypal statements to show that you have a good turnover, and submit these to a merchant bank, the bank will set your charges based on your statements. We found this the best way and got ourselves very good rates with streamline/ sagepay (didn't need to jump through hoops)

[lancashireroseblinds]

our problem has been that we traded under the umbrella of someone else, so sage pay are making us wait a bit longer, but we are happy so far with nochex. Think regardless of which processor you use, the main thing is to get a facility on there as sales increase once people have the option to pay by credit/debit cards.

[StevenHickey]

Hi Guys,

SagePay have a response to this thread which they would like us to post (as we can't let 3rd parties post direct on the forum). Response is as follows:

Sage Pay’s merchant account offer is in association with our acquiring partner Elavon. The advantages of the offer are that we can act as a ‘one-stop-shop’ for your payment processing and the pricing plan is designed for start-up businesses (no set-up fee, no minimum monthly fee, and no long term contract).


One possible drawback is that it can take a bit longer to set up the merchant account than if you went directly to your business bank for one. The timescale is around 4 weeks and Elavon will require quite a few supporting documents with your application, but this is because of the nature of start-up businesses and because they don’t have an existing banking relationship with you.


We’ve tried to make the set up process as simple and easy as possible and we have a team of merchant services advisors to guide you through the whole process. If you are interested in Sage Pay or our merchant services and have any questions, I’d be happy to answer them for you.

Contact is support@sagepay.com and make the email for the attention of Adam Blacklock.

Regards

- Steven