Online Payment methods

If you have an existing website that accepts paypal payments online the following factors may be on your mind or affect you:
1 Previously you may have used your instore credit and debit card payments, a debit card transaction is approx 21 pence, credit cards are approx 1 to 2 %. With paypal the charges on a £2000 product are about £26.00, which is a big lump out of the profit margin.
2 Clients can pay via their credit / debit cards using the paypal system but many of them will ring up and think that they have to pay via paypal leaving you to explain to them that if they look they can pay by card.
3 You believe that many of your customers tend to be the more wealthier and do not have paypal accounts and think this might be putting people off.
4 You may wonder if there is a way you can just go to using credit/debit cards in preference of the paypal system,
5, You think you would really like people directed through the card system due to the high charges.
Our General response would be:
To accept credit card payments online you can opt to accept credit card payments directly on your site if you want this then you will need an Internet Merchant Account that invokes a monthly fee plus (normally) a transaction fee. The majority of our eCommerce solutions including our full ecommerce sites and ‘part ecommerce sites’ the client normally opts to use paypal due to the competitive fees and the lack of ongoing monthly fees.
If a client wants to move away from Paypal completely the website would need to be to be a full ecommerce site, but the benefits of that is that it would give the client 100% control over their stock / costings, postage and payment methods but the cost of the new site could possibly not be attractive for a website client that only will sell the occasional product online.
There is another solution which is Paypal payments pro but its recommended only for businesses that have online payments in excess of £1000 per month, it currently costs £20 per month plus a transaction fee. This will allow you to take credit card payments directly on your site.
In general if you have a site that accepts payment via paypal buttons (Paypal – payments standard) you have the following choices if you are considering change:
1, Redesign your website to be full ecommerce website along with an Internet merchant account (£££ plus ongoing £)
2, Implement payments pro from Paypal (£ plus ongoing £)
3, Keep existing system (free plus no ongoing costs apart from cost time time for changes to product prices and the addition of new products)