This section of the forum is for discussing the business and finance issues of the t-shirt industry. Which business structure to use (sole proprietor, LLC, S Corp, etc), how to handle billing, where to register your business and get the proper licensing, etc.
I have been in business for over 15 years and for the most part managed just fine not taking credit cards. Recently, however, I missed out on a pretty big job because I did not,so decided maybe its time to take the plunge. So many of the services have monthly minimum sales requirements or high monthly fees which would not work for me as I am a very small business. So after searching and making calls enduring agonizing obnoxious sales pitches I have narrowed it to two services, Propay or IntelliCollect. Has anyone used either of those services? Or does anyone have any other suggestions of someone they have used and liked or anyone to stay away from?
Thanks so much.
sewon, i have not worked with either of those merchant account providers, however, in looking at Propay I see a couple of things:
1) They are a registered agent of Wells Fargo. You really can't go wrong with your underlying merchant account provider being WF. I used WF years ago and had no issues with their support or service.
2) The processing fees listed on their website are way too high. If you're selling on the internet, you need a MOTO merchant account (mail order / telephone order). You should be able to get one for around 2.1x%, plus $0.25 per transaction. Check what they charge for "Chargebacks" as well. Also your monthly fees should not far exceed $10. If you're selling retail, your "card present" transactions should be even lower than that.
You can check our PayPal. They offer merchant accounts to SMB. I found them to be a little more pricey than what I wanted to spend (i needed to maintain my margin), but I suspect they make it easy to work with them.
I would highly recommend giving PayJunction a call. I found them through my CubeCart shopping cart software. They got me up and running with a merchant account in less than a week and I got a very competitive rate from them. They also have several different ways to implement their online processing service. Since CubeCart has a PayJunction modulde, I just enabled it and it worked! My rep is Mike Francl (mfrancl@payjunction.com). I'm sure he'd welcome some more business.
Isn't 5.5% pretty high compared to other companies charging a little more than 2% without card present.
Well, it all depends on how you pencil it out. The one thing I like about it is there are no monthly fees. I am only charged when there is a sale. No sales...No fees.
I probably should go in and pencil it out again as ours sales have increased quite a bit since we started with 2checkout and it may more cost effective now to go with a lower rate and pay the monthly fees..Good point.
Well, it all depends on how you pencil it out. The one thing I like about it is there are no monthly fees. I am only charged when there is a sale. No sales...No fees.
I probably should go in and pencil it out again as ours sales have increased quite a bit since we started with 2checkout and it may more cost effective now to go with a lower rate and pay the monthly fees..Good point.
Thanks
Mike
You would need to compare it to someone else that may charge an annual fee or monthly fee to see if 2.3% plus the fees are cheaper than 5.5% with no fees. Should be pretty simple since you probably know you average monthly sales.
www.getvms.com
this is who i use i used to use propay and switched almost a year and a half ago ask for philip he will give u a good deal customer service is great
I've been using PayPal for quite some times now, it's been almost a year and I'm satisfy with their services. Though their rate is definitely not the cheapest but only by putting the PayPal logo on the site has already given us a lot of help because of their reputation.
I have used PayPal for the t-shirt business i just started along with other business ventures over the past year... again, as stated previously, the rates are a little bit higher than others, however, the services are pretty cool... it is nice to just click on "request money" and it automatically generates an email to that client... not sure if others do it... for me PayPal is ok... i think if business gets better i might investigate other options... hope this helps...
Does anyone mix paypal with another CC processing company? I was thinking of having a Paypal link so people who only use Paypal will feel comfortable, but also using a different company to process non-paypal CC orders. I was looking at Chase Paymentech (there's a few links to get to it, I found it at Home | BJs Payment Processing), which has no monthly fee and low transactions fees. It's cheaper than Paypal and actually the cheapest I've found with no monthly fee.
Accepting Credit Cards 
