Recommended Merchant / Gateway Providers
Are you looking for the lowest merchant account rates?
If you are looking for a Merchant Account, and you want or need the lowest merchant rates without compramising quality of service, then you can benefit from my research. I researched and compared rates and companies until I found the lowest merchant rates. This is the company I work with and I recommend them.
I am sharing this to save you time and money, as I would have liked when I was making a decision.
My Plan.
I am a web designer and I conduct my business transactions on-line, so my needs were to find the best merchant rate in combination with the lowest gateway fees (the "gateway" is how your on-line transactions are processed). This is the plan I have, and I recommend contacting them with your specific needs, as you likely have different needs. (And as an update for on-line businesses, I understand they recenly added their own gateway so they could elimanate the below $5/month gateway fee as well).
- Gateway: Authorize.net
- Set-up fee: $39
- Gateway Fee: $5/month
- Merchant statement Fee: $5/monh
- Minimum monthly transaction fee: $10 (if you have no transactions. If you do, the transaction fees you pay will be deducted from this $10).
- 25 cents per transaction
- 2.19% per transaction with basic MasterCard and Visa
The types of fees above are fairly standard across all merchant / gateway accounts, except that the amount of the above rates is much lower. For the most part, what I have seen elsewhere totals at about $50/month in fees, and in only one other place I found a total of about $30/month in fees. If you are on a budget, starting out, or simply want the best deal, this is it.
Who to call
Call Merchant Warehouse at 866-338-9187.
or click on their logo below to go to their website.
{ ...and for what I know to be the most widely used, the most professional and by far the most commonly integrated with any on-line payment processing program that goes beyond just using PayPal - you will want to sign up with an account with Authorize.net as a payment gateway. You can click on the logo here to sign up with them:
Back to Merchant Warehouse - although my needs were for the best merchant account rate for online transactions, definately contact them about your needs. Their business model is to provide the lowest merchant rates and make their money on volume of customers, without compromising quality of service. That is their business approach, so that is what you get.
This is a little about Merchant Warehouse, from their website:
Since 1998, Merchant Warehouse® has maintained a distinguished reputation as one of the largest, most reputable merchant service providers in the payment card industry. Merchant Warehouse has enabled over 50,000 businesses nationwide to accept electronic card payments by offering the best deals on merchant processing solutions and by providing unrivaled service and support.
Merchant Warehouse is Your One-Stop-Shop for:
- Discounted Credit Card Processing Services & Equipment
- Customized Business Processing Solutions
- Competitive Merchant Account Pricing & Value-Added Programs
- Reliable, Accessible, & Knowledgeable Support Teams
If you want to share this information with someone you know who may be looking for low merchant rates or the best merchant rate, you can use the convenient button below. Just put your cursor over it and it should open a pop-up with options.
How easy is it to set-up for on-line credit card transactions?
How easy is it to set up your shopping cart or Freshbooks account with your on-line Merchant account combined with Authorize.net?
- Within 24-48 hours after you create your account with Merchant Warehouse, you will get an e-mail from Authorize.net. Click on the link in the e-mail to set-up your authorize.net account with the basic information about you and your business they will need to process your payments;
- Login to your account and go to: “Accounts – Settings” in your Authorize.net control panel;
- Under the heading Security Settings, click on “API Login ID and Transaction Key” option, and enter those two keys into the appropriate place in your shopping cart or Freshbooks account;
- Your account will automatically be in Test Mode to start with. You can run a test transaction to see how it works without having the transaction actually processed. Then go to the same Security Settings page as above and click on the “Test Mode” link to take it out of test mode.
- That’s it. Unless you need website services.
Do you need website services? Website hosting?
And just in case you didn't notice, I am a professional web designer and developer. Use the following links to return to the top of this page, go to my home page, or go to my portfolio page to view some beautiful web design work: