Merchant Account and Payment Processors

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If you can get an adult merchant account, there is no shortage of gateways that you can work with. If it is your merchant account, you can then pay a small monthly fee and a per transaction fee to a NUMBER of gateway processors that already have member/subscription processing.

Netbilling and ATS both charge $20 for a monthly statement fee and either 1.5% + 15 cents or .30-.50 per transaction. You don't need to pay the 15% to the processor. Even Authorize.net will run members sites through their system at a $20/month and .30/transaction + an AVS authorization fee.

The only companies charging the 15%+ are the ones running IPSP accounts where they are sponsoring you. The IPSP usually includes some end-customer support, etc.

Of course, your bank will charge you a discount rate based on a number of factors. Higher risk might get you in the 3.5% rate to start with. Your personal credit history (or the credit guarantor), length of time in business, the greediness of the person taking your application and your eagerness/desparation level will all affect your discount rate.

Then you get the CISP stuff where they charge you $500-$2500/year to run Nessus & Nmap (both free programs) against your server and certify that you are 'safe'.

Multitude of ways that Visa/MC will get your money, but, the 15+% is usually when you have an IPSP account like CCBill, the recently stated Verotel Pro account, Epoch.

IBill has moved to transaction processing -- however, appears to still be using the IPSP model even for gateway processing. Perhaps that is their value-add for using their fraud scrubbing, customer service, maintaining CISP status, etc.

Although, Netbilling can do all of the same if you have a merchant account. If you've got a business account and have lived at your current residence for more than 6 months, talk with Karen or Mitch @ Netbilling -- they can help with the acquisition of an adult-capable merchant account.

I have no relation with them other than having written quite a bit of code for various clients of mine to interface with their system.