Regsoft: 1) no 2) no 3)$0-$30 - $3.00, $30+ - 10%;

Verotel: 1) no 2) no 3) $3.75-$75.00 - 13.5%;

V-Share: 1) no 2) no 3) $0-$15 - 20%, $15-$100 - $3+4%, $100-$200 - $2+5% etc.

------------------------------------------------------------ Company Name in alphabetical order: 1) Credit Cards acceptance 2) Online Check acceptance 3) Phone(Fax) orders acceptance 4) Recurring Billing feature

2CheckOut: 1) yes 2) yes 3) no 4) yes CCNow: 1) yes 2) no 3) no 4) no ClickBank: 1) yes 2) yes 3) no 4) no IBill: 1) yes 2) yes 3) yes 4) yes MultiCards: 1) yes 2) yes 3) no 4) yes PayPal: 1) yes 2) yes 3) no 4) yes PaySystems: 1) yes 2) yes 3) no 4) yes ProBilling: 1) yes 2) yes 3) no 4) yes ProPay: 1) yes 2) yes 3) no 4) no Regsoft: 1) yes 2) yes 3) yes 4) no Verotel: 1) yes 2) yes 3) yes 4) yes V-Share: 1) yes 2) yes 3) yes 4) yes

------------------------------------------------------------ * Commissions are charged in two most popular ways: * depending on sales volume, for instance, 10% for $0-$1000 in gross sales and 5% for $1000+ or; * flat fees plus percent of transaction amount: $2 + 5%, so if you sell your item for $50 commission is $2+$2.5 (5% out of $50)=$4.5 Note, that commissions shown for credit card billing may be same or may differ from company to company for online checks and, especially, for phone order processing.

As you see, table compares most common features of services, while some secondary options like affiliate program, online auctions support or inability of such companies like PayPal to process all worldwide customers including yours truly, were left behind.

IBill and Verotel, for instance, have retail price maximum limits. The dominating majority of payment processors charge additional fees for chargebacks and refunds, while Regsoft, Verotel or V-share offers a completely risk-free start up, charging commission from actual sales only.

The middleman you will commit to should offer easy ways to administrate your account, view statistics, add/delete products on sale, setup price, tune and customize with your web-site image order page etc.

Depending on nature of your main product: tangible or intangible, some companies may or may not meet your needs. Check Verza.com payment processing company for tangible and shippable goods. They are Mother company of Verotel - division specially designed for intangible products or "bits" sellers.

Carefully read terms & conditions agreement, other regulations as well as charge back policy before signing up for any service.

Find out offered ordering security options. While some companies provide sophisticated fraudulent control system and supply you with both server secured order form and non-secured order form for your customer convenience, other payment processors had problems even with coding of their order web-pages, what allowed anyone to literally steal your intangible products by downloading them without payment. That happened because URL of so-called "Thank you" page (where sellers arrange their info materials to download) was clearly visible in source code of order form. This is unacceptable.

You may also want to test their support system and uptime same way you do before selecting a web-hosting provider. Because your order page(s) is(are) hosted at 3rd party payment provider server(s), if they are down for any reason, it may be very sad for your customer to choose a product, click on order link and get error or "The page cannot be displayed" massage.

As you see there are a lot of points to check and analyze. On other hand, remember a rule of not complicating things. The key for easy decision-making process is not to avoid research as some people do going for first offer they see, rather than knowing your needs and capabilities including financial beforehand.

Determine them at very beginning and search companies accordingly, making whole research smooth and easy. Besides, on contrary to, say, domain name choosing, payment processor service is temporal to help you build your online business in a quick, cheap or zero cost way. At some stage due to economy of scale it will be cheaper and more effective for your business to establish personal merchant account with respective e-commerce gateway system.

If you do not run your own business then you should only open a free personal account.

If you use your business account for your affiliate and network marketing programs then you will be charged fees on commissions that you receive. By running these programs through your free personal account you are not charged fees. Over a period of time this could save you a lot of money.

Business Accounts

There are two rate structures for business accounts, “Standard Rate” and “Merchant Rate”. For U.S. accounts, standard rate is 2.9% plus $.30 per transaction. For U.S. accounts merchant rate is 2.2% plus $.30 per transaction. To receive merchant rate you need to be a PayPal member in good standing for 90 days and have received $3,000 in PayPal payments over previous 90 days (an average of $1,000/month). Or you could prove that you have received a competitive offer from an institution like First Data Merchant Services or Metavante Services. Or you could have a proven high volume record as an eBay seller. They will downgrade you to standard rate if you stop meeting their criteria.

PayPal Preferred Sellers can earn 1.5% cash back on debit card purchases made with PayPal ATM/Debit Card. That's like cutting your fees in half! For additional information on this see your PayPal web site.

PayPal VISA

PayPal also offers a VISA card. It has standard features of no annual fee and no liability for unauthorized transactions. They will also credit you with $5.00 first time you use card.