What merchant account should I get? This is for
http://www.tvallowance.com which is about to be back in business after
two years of being idle (due to the factory going out of business and
us taking a while to do a new design and factory setup). We've had no
revenues for two years but had sold 12,000 units at $99 each over the
prior handful of years. We will sell most units over the internet (we
won't have a physical retail presence) and wholesale through
distributors (but don't need credit card processing for these).

I think our criteria should be:

1) costs, including setup fee, discount rate (should be close to 2% or
below), and any other hidden fees such as internet gateway, reporting,
etc

2) customer service quality, is the company trustworthy (vs sleazy),
do they do good email, good website with transaction processing and
reporting, maybe QuickBooks interface, are they responsive, etc

I know about Card Service International. Who is better than them?

I might be using Yahoo Store. I also filled out a survey at
BuyerZone.com.

Thanks,
Paul

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Clarification of Question by englishpaulm-ga on 22 Apr 2003 15:43 PDT

To be more specific, I would like info that I can fill out the
following QuickBase, so I can compare different merchant account
providers "side by side":

https://www.quickbase.com/db/8u52kwp2?a=q&qid=1

--Paul

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Clarification of Question by englishpaulm-ga on 24 Apr 2003 10:03 PDT

I am closing this question.

This seems to be a very basic question for an eCommerce topic, and I
am disappointed that I got no bites.

Maybe Google Answers doesn't have enough qualified answerers looking
over new, unanswered questions.

I wonder what the average time gap is between question asked and
answered? How about for people like me who have a track record of
paying-- you'd think Google Answers software would pay particular
attention to our unanswered questions.

It would not let me answer, so I guess I will comment.

Go with the Yahoo! Store it is probably the best and simplest platform
for what you are trying to do.

For card not present transactions the rates directly fron Visa and
Mastercard are right at 2%, meaning you will never be able to get that
rate or better.  For the best rates and information about merchant
accounts see the following threads:

http://www.ystoretools.com/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=12774

http://www.ystoretools.com/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=7879

Hi wirth25, thanks for your comment. I did go and sign up for the
forum you suggested. The first link you gave is just some guy with a
pipe dream to combine small merchants to some day "next year" get
lower rates together. The second link did not work for me.

I'm looking for concrete info about different merchant account
providers and their rates etc.

Thanks!