Ecommerce Shop sites - Taking Payments Online

Trading online and taking payments via your website is not as complicated as it seems !

Our web sites can take online payments through the following -

Sage Pay - The New Name For Protx

Sage Pay is a payment gateway, which acts as the 'middle man' between your website and your own merchant services.

Whilst your bank may give you a merchant account so that you can take telephone orders and face to face transactions - you will need a payment gateway to take the payment details and to negate the risks of storing card details to accept credit and debit cards on your website.

So, once you have your own merchant services you will need to sign up with Sage Pay so that you can use their system to accept credit and debits cards through your website and process them with your own merchant account.

You will find this to more more cost effective once your sales have reached a certain limit using the third party payment processors ( eg paypal and nochex) This is because third party processors charge a fixed percent on every transaction, but your merchant service will charge a lower percent for credit cards and as little as 25p for debit card payments.

We are official partners with Sage Pay , and you can apply for a Sage Pay account here.

Paypal

Paypal is the method that most people who have traded on eBay are most familiar with. As a third party payment processor Paypal is rather like Marmite in that you either love it or hate it. But the ease of use and the fact that many will already know how Paypal works means that it is ideal to use to start trading online.

Nochex

Nochex is a UK based third party payment processor rather like Paypal. We used to recommend Nochex to everyone as a good alternative to Paypal, but their policies seem to have changed and now would advise to only offer Nochex alongside another payment method and only use their 'seller' account and not their merchant account as the merchant account they offer comes with an inexplicable £50 fee to set up.

Bank Transfer

Offering a bank transfer option can be good if you trade with alot of European customers as bank transfer is used more widely in Europe.

Your bank account number and sort code are send via email upon placing an order so that your customer can deposit the funds directly.

Cheque

Do people still have cheque books ? Yes, they do ! Some people are still nervous of ordering online and you will have some customers who need to pay by cheque for other reasons.

It is always good to offer to accept cheques alongside your other options.

Telephone Payment

Stores that offer payment by telephone DO get a higher conversion from visits on site to goods ordered. Just having your telephone number displayed where it can be found can give greater confidence.

To accept telephone payments you need either your own merchant services.