Service Bureaus
No Merchant Account Required
Web Commerce Today, Issue 48, July 15, 2001
This article contains older information. Go here for newer information on shopping carts and transactions.
These companies handle the entire money transaction process for merchants -- for a fee. The merchant receives the order to ship, and receives funds several weeks after the order.
| E-Commerce Africa Netherlands Africa |
E-Commerce AfricaGruttohof 10 Serves as direct Internet representative for African Merchants, artists and NGOs in The Netherlands, Senegal and The Gambia. Provides hosting, shopping cart, or space in gallery for those without a website. Accepts online payments by credit card or bank draft of check. 10% commission on sales (except for art products which are marked up about 30% and then charged a 5% commission). Merchants with charges over 99 Euro pay a 99 Euro annual subscription fee. Payments are made to merchants on the first day of the month, but for tangible products, not sooner than 30 days after the order. Prices are displayed in Euro. Currently accepts Visa, future plans to accept MasterCard/Eurocard. |
| OrderButton United States Canada |
OrderButton.Net, Inc.9505 Williamsburg Plaza Provides a button that you can put at any product at your web site to enable your site to accept Credit Card sales. No merchant account required. No set-up or monthly charges. Only fee is based on monthly sales. 7% discount rate up to $10,000 down to 5% over $400,000. Simple implementation. Integrates UPS and USPS shipping to US and Canadian addresses. Payments are made to merchant twice per month, one month after ship date. State taxes in US and province taxes in Canada are calculated, added to the order, and collected by the vendor. Currently allows shipping of tangible goods only in the US and Canada, internationally later. All prices in US funds. Customer information stored for anyone who purchase from any OrderButton merchant. |
User Feedback:RESTRICTIONS: NonePERCENT OF TRANSACTION: 5-7% TRANSACTION FEE: none MONTHLY FEES AND SET-UP FEES: None INTERNATIONAL: US and Canada vendors, services global. We: compute taxes, offer up to 5 configurable options field, real time shipping calculations, etc... -- MDB US | |
| ClickBank United States International |
Keynetics Inc.915 W. Jefferson St. System is designed for soft goods and services. $49.95 activation charge, plus $1 and 7% for transactions. No monthly fees. System includes an affiliate program, though affiliates are "owned" by ClickBank, not the merchant. Often used for e-books and information products. US merchants only. Those shipping physical goods pay $99.95 activation fee, $49.95 monthly fee, 25 cents per transaction, and 2.25% on sales over $1000 each month. |
| CCNow United States International |
CCNow, Inc.706 Philadelphia Pike, Suite 5-B Not really a payment gateway, though their service includes one. Does not require a merchant account. Merchants pay no set-up fees, but 9% commission on each sale, 8% during November and December. Foreign merchants are welcome. Depending upon the merchant, payments are made about 15 to 30 days after the sale. If a reserve portion is withheld, it is paid about 2 - 2.5 months after the sale. In this system, CCNow is the actual "seller," and the merchant "fulfills" the order for CCNow. Since CCNow is in Delaware, a no sales tax state, no sales taxes are due. Only hard goods may be sold, no soft goods, entertainment, info products, or services. But only high mark-up items will be competitive with the 8% to 9% fee charged by CCNow. Many merchants really like this approach, however. The system includes a rudimentary shopping cart. See my review: http://www.wilsonweb.com/reviews/ccnow.htm |
User Feedback:CC Now, whenever the Webmaster sets it up on the page!!! We are located in El Salvador. Pay Pal will not come into El Salvador. We are on USD Economy here. No exchange fees. -- Donald Tabbut | |
| We have had sucess with http://www.ccnow.com/, of which I was informed via this site. Pay Pal still does not accept memberships from our country, El Salvador. It is very difficult to initate E Commerce from a Base outside North America, if you have any more info. would be appreciated. -- Donald T. Lee www.elsalbiztours.com SV | |
| I have had good success with CCNOW. As a very small company I could not afford the costs of a full service bank backed credit card processor. CCNOW.com charges 9% but there are zero other upfront or back end costs. They make it easy and simple to sell on line. -- Alan A Trombetta US | |
| I am outside India. I market a breakthrough diabetes diet supplement and the gateway I use and have found reliable is CCNow.com. Of course, you have already done a review for it. Moreover, CCNow is very easy, convenient and best for people outside US. Everything is automated. But yes some features that I would recommend CCNow to add is : - Repeat customers have to re-enter details. - They are a bit lazy on answering customer queries Other than this, they are very secure and reliable. Regards Puneet -- Puneet Gourdin.com IN | |
| MultiCards.com Netherlands International |
De Postel BVMulticards division Fransebaan 56 Java-based shopping cart available. Compatible with other carts such as Jshop Pro and Shopfactory. Provides foreign language/currency order pages with real-time currency conversion. Does not require a merchant account. Multicards, in effect, becomes the retailer for products the merchant ships. Commission paid between 6% and 12%, depending upon the "partner fee" paid annually, between USD 15 and USD 700. Real-time acceptance in US dollars or other currency incurs a USD 0.90 transaction fee. |
User Feedback:A short note to let you know that my firm uses the payment gateway services of www.multicards.com. -- Joe Parker Venture i2i | |
| Kagi United States International |
Kagi1442-A Walnut Street #392 Specializes in handling payment processing for software. No sign-up or monthly fee, or merchant account required. Fees on transactions only as follows: (1) 6.5% up to $3 for operational costs, plus (2) 3.5% plus 50 cents transaction fees. No adult products. Available to vendors outside the US. Includes a register program, though can accommodate the vendor's program for an additional 1% fee. Includes digital delivery mechanism. Payments to merchants are made on the 15th of the month for sales the previous month. Paid by mailed check or wired in US funds only. |
User Feedback:We use Kagi, www.kagi.com and we have recently signed up with Paypal. Kagi is based in the US and we're outside (Belgium) but when we signed with them (in 1997-1998, I don't remember exactly), they were one of the few accepting non-US vendors. Also they have never treated us as second-tier customers as other US payment processor do. We don't need a merchant account but they charge a slightly higher percentage then processors but, for the volume we have, we think that they taking care of everything is worth the small percentage. Also (although we didn't try) we fear it might be hard for us to get a merchant account that would us charge our customers in dollars. Their software is old which has advantages and disadvantages. On the plus side, it's very well tested and well though-of. I anticipates most of the mistakes a shopper can make. Some of the newer systems are sexier but, in my view, it does not beat years of experience processing payments on the Internet. We're talking of small things that makes life easier for customers such as accepting space in a credit card number. However some vendors are scared by what they perceive as a complex system. Kagi originally targeted shareware vendors who, being developers, are not afraid to write a line of code or two. Their system can be dramatically inflexible unless one is tweak a line of code or there. Also, because it's older, it has evolved into a patchwork of solutions. For example, I have (and need!) 3 different logins on their system. This complexity is totally hidden for the customer. In fact, as I already explained, I think they offer top service to the customer. I prefer to make it easy for customers than us but some vendors might look for a more accessible service.Still they are redeveloping their system and, as they gradually bring the new solution online, you can achieve more with less coding. And they plan to implement a single login too. They only accept payments in US dollars (in some cases, they display the price in another currency but the customer is always charged in dollars). They have announced the ability to charge customers in Euros soon (meaning, not only displaying the price in Euros but actually charging the card that exact amount in Euros). They offer some flexibility for international payment. For example, they can wait until one has reached a certain threshold to cut a check. Also they can issue international wire transfer. The company has a US bank account so it's not a problem for us but international vendors on the mailing list have complained. More recently we signed with Paypal as an international vendor. We haven't used it much yet but I would say the process was made much easier thanks to our US bank account. At this point in time, Paypal appears to us as a very US-centric solution and their so-called international accounts are second-rate. BTW you might wonder why we stick with US payment processors. We investigated going with a European one but then we realized that we needed the ability to charge cards in US dollars anyway but most of our customers are in the US. We considered a dual solution but Kagi announced its forthcoming Euros solution shortly thereafter so we decided to wait. -- Benoît Marchal, XML/edi Group | |
| JustGiving.com United Kingdom Western Europe |
Justgiving11 New Burlington Place Provides private sites for charities to receive donations, as well as representation on the justgiving.com site where visitors can search for charities. Provides audit trails and administration costs required for taxes to be reclaimed. Meets Inland Revenue's requirements. No set-up or membership fees. 5% fee on donations made on the Justgiving site, 4% on donations through the "White Label" button on the charity's own website. Plus credit card transaction fee of only 1.5% from NatWest Streamline. Chart shows how VAT reclamation boosts actual amount of gift to charity by 12% to 20%. |
Sample newsletter. We respect your privacy and never sell or rent our subscriber lists. Subscribing will not result in more spam! I guarantee it!