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If I had read this section I’m about to
offer you when I first started out, I could have saved myself a huge
amount of effort.
Investigating how to accept credit cards
on your site can be a lengthy and time-consuming process. I had to slog
through it, and suffer a number of frustrations. But now I can report to
you how easy it can be…
First of all, if you’re selling or
offering anything that requires an exchange of funds, you want to have the
ability to accept credit cards. It’s easy to ask people to send checks,
but through experience, I’ve found that even when people fill out forms
that say they’ll send a check, lots of them forget. Or get lost
in the process.
And people prefer the ease of using
credit cards. I purchase stuff quite a bit on the Internet. Amazon
and Campmor are two
of my favorite sites.
While they have shopping cart systems,
and formal merchant accounts, you don’t need to go through all that
hassle. Of course, sometimes there’s good reasons for setting up your
own merchant accounts, but that’s only if you’re a big outfit. Or you’ve
started to make a lot of sales. It does save money to have your own
credit-card processing in-house, but it’s kind of a moot point when you’re
not doing thousands of sales.
Here’s the two easiest ways I’ve
found: 1) PayPal and
2) the Amazon Honor System.
Using these two is as easy as falling off
a log. Basically, they are third-parties who have full credit card
acceptance (and Electronic Funds Transfer facilities.) Since they’re the
ones who have the merchant accounts, you don’t have to set one up for
yourself. They do it for you.
What you do is pay them a percentage of
each sale (or donation) in exchange for their services. Yes, there are
lots of other companies offering similar services, but I like PayPal
because it’s easy – and it’s inexpensive. For example, on a $15
subscription, they take 63 cents (which is less than 5%) Here’s
an example of accepting payment either by check, or credit card using
PayPal.
The Amazon Honor System is similar to
PayPal. While it’s got a fancy name, it works pretty much the same way.
A visitor pays Amazon through their credit card, and Amazon puts the
payment in your bank account, after deducting a percentage. Amazon costs much
more than PayPal. The percentage they take out is between 15% and 16%.
However, they can accept more and different kinds of credit cards than
PayPal. For example, International payments go easier through Amazon.
Whenever a user has trouble with PayPal,
I usually route him/her to an Amazon Honor System page, which solves the
difficulty. Here’s
an example of the use of the Amazon Honor System (at the bottom of the
page.)
First, you need to setup an account with PayPal.
The name of the account will be your email address. When setting up the
account, you give PayPal the name of your bank and your account number, so
that they can transfer funds into your account, when a user pays you. But
they must first "verify" your account. That means they want to
make a deposit into your account right away, just to see that everything
exists and is working properly.
So once you give them your account
information, you ask them to verify your account. That means they’ll
deposit actual money in your account. (Cool, huh? Free money.) But it’s
only two deposits of amounts less than one dollar. Your part is to keep
your eye on your bank account in the next couple of days, and when you
find those two small deposits, you go back to the PayPal site, and report
how much they put in. That then tells them that it all worked properly,
and your account is thus "verified."
It makes sense. What good does it do to
accept money for you if they’re not absolutely positive they can put it
in your account for you?
When you’re signing up for your account
initially, you should select a Business account, and not a Personal
account. This is because only a Business account can be used to accept
credit card payments. Actually, you can start with a Personal account, but
you have to switch it to be a Business account before you can accept
credit card payments.
At the top of each page is a Merchant
Tools tab. Click on that. If you’re signed up as a Business Account,
then you can scroll down to where it says, Website Payments. The
entire purpose of this is simply to provide you with HTML code (attached
to a button) that you can place on your website. I suggest you use either
the Buy Now Buttons or the PayPal Shopping Cart buttons. Let's talk about
the Buy Now button....
When you enter the description of what
you’re offering and it’s price (plus 2 web addresses: one for when the
payment is complete, and one if the payment process fails,) they’ll
provide you with HTML code that you insert in your website at the point
where you want the user to make the purchase decision. It’ll be a PayPal
button (naturally.)
When any user clicks that, they get sent
to the PayPal website to collect their money via credit card. At the
successful conclusion of the credit card payment, they get sent to the web
address you specified. That’s so you can complete the transaction by
thanking them (if it’s a donation or subscription) or actually giving
them the info product (such as a download) or simply affirming the order
if you need to ship them something.
PayPal also emails you the complete
details of the transaction. I usually fulfill any transaction whenever I
get the email from PayPal -- except for downloads. If a user is purchasing
an ebook, that happens from the thank-you page.
After they’ve made the payment, you can
go to your PayPal account and see a list of payments that have been made
to you. Remember, it doesn’t represent money that has been put in your
bank account. It’s just a list of what PayPal has for you whenever you
decide to transfer it to your bank account. You do that by clicking on the
Withdraw tab. Then they’ll ask you if you want a check sent to
you, or if you want the money to be put in your bank account. Note that
they charge you money to send you a check, but the EFT to your bank
account is free.
You start by going to the Amazon
homepage. Scroll down the page until you see the link to Join
Honor System. When clicking that, you’ll get taken to a page
where you can set things up.
Like PayPal, they identify you by your
email address. So you enter your email address (and a password) to setup
your account. You have to give them your bank account information here;
that’s how you get your money. But unlike PayPal, they don’t verify
your account. They just assume the info you give them is accurate. (Don’t
you wish someone would inadvertently type in your bank account number?)
What you’re going to do next is create
two elements: the first is a webpage that visitors will see when they
click on your Amazon Honor System icon. And the second is the Amazon icon
itself.
After all, what more would you need? You
just put the Amazon icon somewhere in one of your pages where you’re
collecting money. And then when visitors click on that, you need a page
that they go to. So you tell the Amazon system what you want on that page.
(There’s actually only a few options to choose from, anyway – so it’s
fairly straightforward to setup that page.) The last thing you need to
provide is a webpage address to go to, when the process is complete.
Start by clicking on the "Manage
PayPages" link. Then "Create A New PayPage." The form for
setting up your page is pretty simple; just choose from the choices and
provide some text for wording –- and that’s it.
When your PayPage is complete, choose the
link that says "Manage Payboxes" next. A Paybox is the graphic
icon you’ll be putting on your own webpage on your own site, which will
take the visitor to the PayPage you’ve just created. Press "Create
A New Paybox."
 |
You’ll be shown a list of different payboxes you can choose from. (My favorite is the one shown here.) After selecting a good style, you fill in the wording, and the amounts you’re wanting to collect. When finished with that, they’ll show you what you new paybox will look like. |
To complete the process, click on the
link that says, "Install this paybox on your website." What will
happen is that they will present you with some HTML code that you can then
copy-paste into the HTML code of your website. Note that the graphic will
be on their server – not yours. You can mess with the HTML code if you
want, but it’s probably wiser to use it, as is.
As your visitors use the Amazon Honor
System that you’ve setup, money will accumulate in your account. When
you click on "Your Honor System Account," you’ll see your
Account Balance. You can also see a history of transactions with the
amount paid. Amazingly (and this totally blows me away,) they provide you
with NO information about who paid. And they don’t contact you with any
notice by email. You simply have no idea who’s paying, and when –
without going and checking for yourself!
Think about that! How do you contact a
person to thank them? I suppose they figure you’ll ask for that
information on your return page, but really – why should your visitors
have to get asked who they are? They’ve just given that info to Amazon,
who refuses to reveal it to you. Some honor system!
Again, it’s a simple way to accept
payments by credit card on your website (even International credit cards,)
but they take out a hefty 15 to 16% That’s why I prefer PayPal’s 4 -
5%.
I feel it’s a good idea to offer
payment by either check or credit-card. Some people will want to
pay by check, so why not offer the facility? Here’s how I do it…
I setup a standard
webpage form with fields for name, email address and amount paid. When
they press the Submit button, I show them a page all filled out with the
information they typed in. I ask them to verify the information and then
print it on their printer. (Note: Verifying means that if it’s not
correct, they can hit the Back button to correct it.) I then ask them to
put it into an envelope along with their check, and I definitely let them
know I’ll be confirming receipt and sending an acknowledgement (by
email) when I receive it in the postal mail.
Since they had to hit the Submit button,
you can collect the info on your website, so you’ll know you can expect
a check.
There are many other payment systems I have come across. Here's a few:
Copyright © 2004-2005 Web Wise News
by Vidya Ishaya
(also known as Burton Smith)
Ashland, OR
