a question for those with merchant accounts

G

Gene Martin

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Feb 5, 1999
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For those of you who have merchant accounts, what software do you use for a storefront and how do you handle credit card sales vs inventory on hand?

We run cards manually because of changing inventory, but still have to be PCI compliant. We are using CRE Loaded, but apparently it has some vulnerabilitirs. My daughter initially set up the website 16 years ago and has changed it several times, but she's in grad school getting a PhD and doesn't have time to work on the site. We can do a lot, but we aren't programmers.

I never thought that, as a knifemaker, I'd be asking questions like this, but if anyone has an easier system, we are all ears.

Thanks one and all,

Gene
 
This is actually a good question and one I'm trying to figure out too. I want to get my site set up for credit card sales. Anyone...
 
I use paypal for online credit card sales, they are PCI compliant and are prett easy to work with. I have a NURIT wireless terminal that I take to shows, and it is PCI compliant.I don't do card over phone transactions since everyone is more secure if there is documentable conversations surrounding a transaction, so email/web I do entirely paypal, personal contact they swipe their card in the machine,

-Page
 
I use paypal mostly. Take C/C over the phone and use Pro-Pay online. They have several ways to do it. Pretty reasonable too.
 
I feel slightly qualified to answer this question. Yay!

If you have a traditional merchant account (one that you use a machine to swipe the card) then your processor will have or have a relationship with a gateway that does online processing. That gateway will then have a list of authorized "shopping carts" that can be utilized.

For instance: In my old business we used Innovative Merchant Solutions which got bought by Intuit. They have "Innovative Gateway" that acts as the go between for your website to communicate to the card processors.

Now that I have said all of that, I am going away from traditional merchant solutions myself. I am getting my website ready. The website will be a Wordpress content management system. I will have installed WP_shoppe that will act as my shopping cart. I will choose Paypal and Google Checkout as my payment solutions. Both have about the same discount rate. Both handle the secure transaction for me. I like Paypal because so many have it. I like Google Checkout for the folks that don't have Paypal and they simply want to run a credit card.

Lastly, may I offer one last bit of advise? No matter what solution is used; never store other peoples credit card information on your server. That is unless you are an internet security professional or have a security team on staff. Leave that to Paypal, Google and the merchant gateways.

My number is in my signature if you need to chat about this in detail. I am happy to help out.
 
Thank you all and keep the info coming.

I've been processing cards for a number of years. At this time I do very little face to face contact and process through my computer. It's a secure server. The card info is stored in separate places and is encrypted. I am PCI compliant, I do take PayPal.

My problem is that, with PayPal, the order comes in and is funded. So if customer X wants 3 blades and I only have 2 in stock, he has prepaid. I contact him and tell him it will be 1 week, 3 weeks, whatever, until I can finish his order and ship it. So I'm sitting on his money and I don't like that.

The CC companies want to do it the same. The problem is that we have an ever changing inventory, between blades and Sally's mosaic pins, and so we may or may not have it. I can contact the customer and tell them it will tentatively ship X date and I'll charge the card when it's ready to ship. I'm not sitting on anybody's money.

I really don't want to have to spend computer time constantly updating inventory, rather than being in the shop creating it.

There has to be a happy medium somewhere. I'm resigned to the fact that we will have to take over the website from my daughter. She's been writing code since 1995, even though she's not a programmer. I've been writing code since never and want to keep it that way.

Scott, I will give you a call.

Gene
 
I took down all of the buy buttons on my website, people email or call me, we document the details of the transaction, especially since much of my work is customized or made-to -order, then I email them a paypal money request, they paypal me the money. That way I have control of when and how much money they pay, because no money changes hands until I send them the money request.

-Page
 
For the store, we use X-Cart - and yes, it is a lot of work, but better than the free things like OS Commerce and better than Comersus. It does require keeping inventory up to date and with nearly 1000 items, we do get inventory failings. All billing / checkout etc is secure server.

For our C/C processing, we use Elavon that we sourced through Costco member services. That has been one of our best choices ever - very reasonable rates and absolutely seamless. We set X-Cart for manual C/C processing because it isn't that much trouble. If customer, wants 3 and we only have two, we just email for instructions and bill accordingly.

It isn't perfect, but it is the best we've found.

Edited to add: Of course, also take PayPal, Checks, M.O....... no live chickens
 
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I've been a web developer for a little over 4 years now and I can confidently say that it is much better to just use a shopping cart that sends off the info to Paypal as you need some serious encryption for a credit card based sales system. If you think about it most people who buy things online use paypal. It's a trusted system. When you take the responsibility of Parsing credit card payments yourself you also take on the responsibility to keep those numbers safe and unhackable.

As a general rule I like to keep thing simple and easy to maintain so when I make an online store I usually use a content management system with a very simple shopping cart and when checkout happens they are sent to Paypal. I would probably make a nice little desktop program that would parse your information and automatically upload it to your site as a new item

Edit: as an aside if you are a very large business and can afford a six figure website you should be alright with your own creditcard Parsing however a ton of people prefer paypal
 
I spoke to Gene last night. He has a standard merchant account with a payment card industry approved gateway. He uses this system so it also allows him to take credit cards at shows also.

We discussed Google Checkout as, I believe, it allows him to "approve" an order and accept payment when the order is ready and not before. This is important to him. He does not feel honorable taking someone's money when he might not have the product for a few weeks. :cool:

We also discussed smart phones. I brought this up in answer to his need to accept cards at shows. Squareup.com allows one to put a tiny "square" device in your smart phone and swipe a credit card for immediate payment anywhere. The user is emailed a receipt that includes geographical data showing where the transaction took place. Kinda cool. I have yet to use it, but I am ready!

Gene; It occurs to me you could go 100% Paypal with a smart phone and a tiny switch in your shopping cart. Take the order on your website without payment data. When the order is filled then send a "Paypal invoice" to the customers. He pays at that time, and you ship. The smart phone is for shows, so you can do the same thing at your booth from the phone.
 
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