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We're a European based startup planning to sell domain names and digital goods into a niche market and will focus primarily on the US market.

The only current option for accepting credit card payments from the US (in USD) we're aware of is PayPal because US payment providers usually don't deal with European merchants/companies.

Can you recommend a solid and low priced US-based payment gateway provider doing business with European mechants? Or should we try to find a european gateway even when we do USD-only transactions from the US?

thanks!

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3 Answers

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We had been shopping for payment providers for a while and finally found the perfect solution by asking our local bank (HSBC) which provider they recommended, which turned out to be http://www.globalpaymentsinc.com. There is also Authorize.net but they don't deal with non-U.S/Canadian businesses. Their parent company (Cybersource.com) does however.

PS: I would strongly advise any serious business to stay away from Paypal.

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Could you elaborate on why it's not a good idea to use PayPal? Their fees are 50% of what the banks want to charge me for accepting foreign currencies in New Zealand, so it's tempting. – Alex - Aotea Studios Apr 13 '10 at 2:36
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Depends on the transaction amount. For enterprise size business I'd recommend CyberSource.com for a smaller business -- Authorize.com, which was purchased by Cybersource a few years ago. The reason I recommend this company because they have offices in US, Europe and Asia and do a lot of business world-wide. Check their site for more info.

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You should look at Avangate, they offer per transaction + percentage rates that are much more favorable to PayPal.

It integrates to your website as a payment portal, so it is branded how you would like it to, and they handle the function of accepting card payments, even PayPal.

Finally, they have some awesome metrics to help you statistically analyze your customers, market, products, etc... Once you navigate to their website, check out the e-commerce link.

Hope this helps,

-Nick

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