What are the pros and cons of merchant account credit card payment systems vs. third-party payment systems?
You will pay for two services — the shopping cart system and the credit card processing service. The shopping cart system can be free-$20 per month. The payment processing service comes in the two varieties, a merchant account in your name, or a third party payment system, which will have a master merchant account that you are allowed to use for a small fee. A merchant account in your name will start with a basic monthly $25.00 fee. Breaking this cost down, there is a monthly “statement fee” of $10.00 and a “gateway fee” of $15.00. Additionally, there is a “miniumum processing fee” of $25.00, if your volume of sales is under the $1,000. Then, there is the per sale fee of approximately 2.35% and a per transaction fee of approximately $.35 per transaction. If you are using a third party payment system, then the costs would be $0.00-$20.00 per month, plus approximately 3.5%-15% per sale fee and $.35-$1 per transaction fee each (the $1 per transaction fee offers the lowest percentage0 for
