Re: Re[2]: FN-FORUM Online Credit Card Transactions

date posted 7th June 2002 09:23

If you've got a small site to get up online I wouldn't bother with online
processing Dan, as long as the have a PDQ terminal just post the order
details to your server and create a login page or something for them to
access it.

I've got a client with a small e-commerce site, they do around £5000 - £7000
a year on it and their only a small giftshop so offline processing is ideal
for them.

Best Regards
D Thomas

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Web: http://www.twdmedia.com
Mail: [EMAIL REMOVED]
Tel / Fax: 07092 308437
-----------------------------------------------------------------
----- Original Message -----
From: "Dan Sumption" [EMAIL REMOVED]
To: [EMAIL REMOVED]
Sent: Thursday, June 06, 2002 11:53 PM
Subject: RE: Re[2]: FN-FORUM Online Credit Card Transactions


> I've sent you the rate card privately since you don't believe me!

Did I say that? Well, actually I said your mileage may vary. And the
document you sent confirms what I said, they do charge a fixed rate, and it
only works out around 10p a transaction if you do approaching a multiple of
1000 transactions a month (if you were doing 1001 transactions a month then
it would be closer to 20p a transaction), and that's not counting the
whopping great annual fee on top which would add another 8p a transaction.
You'd have to be doing about 10,000 sales a month for it to approach 10p a
transaction. Oh, and if you want to be able to process more than 1
transaction at a time you have to pay some more on top, otherwise some of
those 10,000 may be a little slow.

I'm sure Datacash are right for some people (people running big big HUGE
online stores), although I have seen a lot cheaper (can't speak for the
comparative service though). However I'm trying to get a small site off the
ground where online sales are indidental to the main business, and I like to
be pessimistic about online sales numbers anyway, so I would estimate 10 or
20, maybe 50 if we're lucky, sales per year. Which would actually cost me a
hell of a lot more than the 20 quid per purchase I guessed at in my last
email... more like, sod it, I can't be bothered to do the sums, but a lot
more money than I could justify charging for a T-Shirt or a magazine
subscription.

Having seen the sales figures for some supposedly fairly big players
(including a subsidiary of the UK's biggest company [at least they were a
while back - if you've ever watched Pop Idol you may know who I'm talking
about]) I know that there are other much bigger fish (birds and moles,
rather) out there also making far, far, _far_ (, **far**) less than 10,000
sales per month.

Sorry to be an irritating pedant :-) and thanks for sending the rate card.

Dan Sumption
http://www.pernoctator.com - Business
http://www.sumption.org - Pleasure
http://www.bradonpace.com - Up a level