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I use Paypal to handle payments. Recently I found out they require the customer to have an account for large transactions. However, it is impossible for a corporate credit card user to create an account. Also, the customer could pay by check due to bureaucracy.

To solve this, I signed up with Paypal virtual terminal, which allowed me to accept the credit card over the phone, and not be subject to any limits. However, the monthly fee eats some profit for these one-time transactions.

Is there a payment processor that:

  • Handles transactions of a few thousand dollars
  • Charges per-transaction and not monthly?
  • Works for a seller based in Canada
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I ended up using Paypal virtual terminal. Paypal lets me cancel it any time, so I sign up for a month at a time when I need it. But the fees are enormous for a $2K transaction. I usually try to push the buyer to send a check which costs me almost nothing to process. – Steve Hanov Nov 24 '11 at 15:26

5 Answers

up vote 2 down vote

I have not found any credit card service that doesnt have a monthly fee. If you are doing a lot of check transactions then look into ACH processing. It wont allow you to do credit cards but the fees are very low, and not based on the amount of the transaction.

Unfortunately if you only do credit card transactions every once in a while then you are stuck using a service such as paypal. The problem is that Paypal doesnt reflect the highest amount of professionalism.

If you can afford to pay $45-50 per month for credit card and check processing I can turn you on to a great merchant services firm (they will work with canada) in the us that could make your life a lot easier.

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up vote 0 down vote

Not sure if it is because I am in the US or what but I have had people pay me thousands of dollars using PayPal without them creating an account. You can then use the 'create button' type of feature in PayPal and one of them is to create a link to send in an email. Then send that to your customer. They should not have to make an account.

You can upgrade your account for $30/mo to have a PayPal virtual terminal where you can type in their digits and information and charge them.

Any higher quality services such as Authorize.Net will have monthly statement fees as well.

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I too process thousands of dollars of credit card transactions monthly through PayPal. I am in the US. However, lately, PayPal has been very finicky and denying many trascations. If customers are persistent, I can take their order over the phone via our Authorize.net virtual terminal. I will be migrating away from PayPal because of the problems and pissed off customers. – Clint Dec 14 '10 at 0:58
up vote 0 down vote

Indeed. Take a look at FastSpring.

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up vote 0 down vote

We use Merchant Warehouse in the US. I'm not sure if they also serve Canada.

Nonetheless, they have a monthly fee of $25; however, your monthly per item transaction fees deduct from that. For example, if you process a single $833.33 transaction for the month at 3%, you will not pay the $25 monthly fee. There is an unavoidable $5 monthly fee associated with Authorize.net for their gateway service. Plus, we have a free business account at a local brick and mortar bank where funds are deposited.

The few thousand dollars per transaction should not be a problem. You must disclose this transaction pattern on your application or ask your sales rep.

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up vote 0 down vote

Merchant Warehouse is a rip off, I have used them in the past. The only credit card processor that I know of that will fill your requirements is streip.com which is fairly new. You can fill in your customers information in their very nice portal, and then just fill in the bill amount. stripe.com does hold payments for 7 days. Give them a try, let me know how you like them.

I have not processed when them but so far they appear very professional.

I currenlty process my credit card transactions with cdgcommerce.com

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