Online Payment Options

Your customers can pay for their orders right on your website using any combination of these three supported online payment methods: Authorize.net (merchant acct), PayPal, or Mal's eCommerce. Each of these services has its pluses and minuses both for you and for your clients.

Only Authorize.net allows the client to stay within your website throughout the entire payment process. With the other options, they leave your site and enter a secure third party website that doesn't look like your website besides the logo.

* With Authorize.net in addition to the monthly fee you'll also need a "dedicated IP and SSL security certificate" which Inspectamatic provides for $125/year.
** With Authorize.net there is a $15 monthly minimum transaction fee.
*** With PayPal if you have monthly sales over $3000 the transaction fee goes down to $0.30 + 2.5%.

1. Authorize.net

Authorize.net is an internet merchant account and payment gateway, and what that basically means is that it allows customers to pay online with a credit card and the card will be automatically processed at the time of payment. Funds will be automatically deposited to your bank account within a day or two of the payment.

Authorize.net provides an full-featured backend that allows you to view charges, manually process charges through a virtual terminal, issue refunds, and more.

When clients pay through Authorize.net, they stay within your website throughout the entire process. The downside to Authorize.net is its small monthly cost. Since a bank is involved, it can take days to set up your account, and your credit will be checked.

If you already have a merchant account, it may be possible to keep it and get just the Authorize.net payment gateway component, but some merchant accounts aren't compatible with Authorize.net. In this case, you'd need to get an internet merchant account and payment gateway both through Authorize.net (and whether you'd keep your older merchant account or cancel it would be up to you).

For security reasons, you'll also need a "dedicated IP and SSL security certificate" in order to use Authorize.net, and Valued Websites provides these for $125 per year.

Sign up for Authorize.net through Inspectamatic, and there will be no setup fee and monthly charges will only be $10 (normally $99 setup and $28/month).

2. PayPal

PayPal is similar to Authorize.net in that it allows clients to pay online with a credit or debit card, and the card will be automatically processed at the time of payment. It's different in that with PayPal the client is transferred to the PayPal website to enter their billing information. Clients don't need to be a PayPal member to use it for credit card payments, but they do need to for debit/e-check payments. Payments are not automatically deposited to your bank account--you have to request them, and that takes 4 days.

Signing up for a PayPal account (you'll need one if you want to accept payments) takes just a few minutes, but can take a couple of days to "verify" your account.

PayPal is a good option if you want to have payments automatically processed but you don't want to pay the higher fees associated with Authorize.net.

See www.paypal.com

3. Mal's Ecommerce

Mal's is a service that allows your clients to enter their billing information into a secure third-party website. You then retrieve this information at your leisure and manually process it with your existing merchant account.

There is a free version and a $96/year premium version (it allows you to stick a "Hacker Safe" logo on your payment screens, a logo which normally costs $2000 per year). In both the free and the premium versions, the client will leave your website and enter the Mal's website in order to enter their billing information. Mal's does not charge a per-transaction fee, but whatever fees apply to your existing merchant account will apply when you manually run the charges.

Mal's is a good option if you already have a merchant account and want to continue using it to process charges manually, but still allow clients to pay online.

See www.mals-e.com

For more information or if you have any questions please email info@inspectamatic.com.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Authorize.net
2. PayPal
3. Mal's Ecommerce

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