Merchant Advice

conners

Hi all,

I am looking to start selling online with a payment gateway other than paypal and I will processing orders like this; the customer will pay me in full and once received I will pay the supplier and they will ship the order on my behalf.

Now the problem I can see with most services is that I will have to wait a few business days before the payments from customers are transferred from the payment gateway provider to my business bank account meaning that there will be a delay between me receiving payment and the order being shipped.

What I am wondering is if there is any way to get around this , are there any services out there where the money is instantly deposited into my business bank account so I can pay my suppliers right away?

Thank you for any help in advance

TheCostumeShop.ie: Ronan

Not likely to happen with a merchant account I'm afraid, unless you have a big track record with them. You could look at getting a bank loan or factoring your invoices if the lead time was long enough.

Ofcourse you could pay your supplier by credit card? Get the 30 days credit, deliver in ten and have 20 days from time of settlement.

conners

Thanks for the reply Ronan (and nice sites BTW), hopefully that will work and the limit on the credit card won't be too low. I am planning to go with AIB and Realex as they seem to offer great services.

YouBuyLocal

Why not take the sellers credit card details with an agreement that you may charge the transaction fee off their card once the order is made. You send invoices to buyer & seller confirming transaction and although it is harder to track whether the seller has been paid, once there are no disputes you should be fine. The buyer could pay in any form they agree with the seller, paypal or bank transfer or whatever.

Maybe you could take the buyers credit card details for security, in case the seller says the payment hasn't gone through after shipping. If the seller is dodgy then he will rack up negative reviews from customers, but if the buyer is dodgy, well they can be slightly more anonymous unless they have a long-term account with you and you don't want to restrict buyers anyway, regardless.

I am trying to get my head around these things myself to be honest, just thinking out loud.

But if you do want the transactions to go through your account, then surely you can pay them out of your account before the payments have cleared. Its only the odd one you'll have trouble with right?

TheCostumeShop.ie: Ronan

conners wrote: »

Thanks for the reply Ronan (and nice sites BTW), hopefully that will work and the limit on the credit card won't be too low. I am planning to go with AIB and Realex as they seem to offer great services.

Limit's can be grown as your business grows and you can pay them back daily to keep away from the limit (up to 10k a day - I found that out the hard way once upon a time doing the same). After that level of daily sales, your supplier will give you payment terms.

How do I put this nicely... Try anyone except AIB for merchant services.

@YouBuyLocal - The way it works is you Authorize the customers card for payment and get approval, but you can't settle until the goods have been dispatched. Kind of like how a hotel authorises your card if you want to use the minibar and have a bar tab, then settles when you've executed the purchase the next morning.

Depending on the sector and your risk factor they may also request delayed funding to cover themselves for chargebacks.

conners

OK so that shouldn't be a problem then, would you recommend Elavon for merchant services?

I read your blog post on merchant bankers and saw you had some trouble but how is going now?

Appreciate all this help !

TheCostumeShop.ie: Ronan

Lol, Everything that follows is my personal opinion: Yes merchant bankers are boardline criminals in my mind, in that they are essentially unregulated and make up the rules as they go. They have no one to answer to and apologise to no-one, they single handedly force businesses out of business on a whim sometimes, even when the business is still viable. They are in desperate need of monitoring.

Since that post almost a year ago we've got merchants to change their view on Maestro cards, thankfully. They still have no idea about PCI-DSS however are encouraging their users to become compliant, albeit, I'm fairly sure in Elavons case the letter they sent their clients wouldn't last a minute in court because it's unenforceable and anti-competitive. Anyway I digress.

The merchant choice is a case of best of a bad bunch. The processor choice is the complete polar opposite, they are all awesome (Worldnet TPS, Sagepay and Realex) - so it's down to price.

So when choosing a merchant make sure you get a good rep, question every assumption because they don't always know how the internet world works and will open whichever account makes their life easiest.

At the moment my rep (I'm still with Elavon) is being a superstar and we now have a great relationship, because he is the guy that will argue my case internally so I don't have to. I'd be happy to put anyone intouch with him as he somewhat understands the ecomm business (pm me).

HellFireClub

conners wrote: »

Hi all,

I am looking to start selling online with a payment gateway other than paypal and I will processing orders like this; the customer will pay me in full and once received I will pay the supplier and they will ship the order on my behalf.

Now the problem I can see with most services is that I will have to wait a few business days before the payments from customers are transferred from the payment gateway provider to my business bank account meaning that there will be a delay between me receiving payment and the order being shipped.

What I am wondering is if there is any way to get around this , are there any services out there where the money is instantly deposited into my business bank account so I can pay my suppliers right away?

Thank you for any help in advance

Nope, but in fairness you get an immediate authorisation or a declined payment notification from the payment gateway if you set your system up properly. It's usually a 3 day cycle from when you take a payment until when you get paid.

You can put a policy in place however where you dispatch within 5 working days, so on day 3 when the funds reach your account (usually), you can dispatch the goods at that stage and this will tick the box you wish to have ticked.

conners

Thanks the replys guys, I have emailed Evalon so hope to hear from them soon and get setup.

It will be great to finally get away from depending on PayPal!