Help and advice on chip and pin + web payments,

[Anterweb]

I have just started up my business,

My actinic shop is just a couple of weeks of been finished and ready to sell.

www.digi-com.co.uk

The problem I have is I have NO facility in my retail shop for taking card payments ( a chip and pin machine )

I have set up a business bank account with lloyds tsb, But I also do not have any website payment method for my actinic web store ,

I am looking for advice on the best way to go, I know the people that had the retail shop before me used streamline but they had to cancel it when the shop was signed over to me, I know I need a "Merchant" account for selling secure online ( I have an SSL on the checkout of the store set up )

I had a quote from loyds for the merchant account and chip and pin machine set up and rental but the prices seemed very exspenisve!

As this is a new business venture and I have never done this before any advice or help on the right move or company/s to use from people like yourselves already trading it will be very much appreciated.

Anthony

[Rich Brady]

PCI DSS is what you need to be searching the forum for and PSPs. Have a look at the link in my sig too.

[guccij]

A reasonably quick way to get yourself set up correctly, and avoid the hoops that new internet merchants need to jump through, would be to look at WorldPay. It's integrated with Actinic: www.worldpay.com

Or use PayPal, the PCI compliant version.

[plantshop]

Im a little confused here as you are a professional ecommerce website designer http://bigpinkhippo.com/ and everything you need to know about integrating the psps is in the help files and already posted many times.

Forgive me if Im wrong

[cobbler]

There are a few ways to go about accepting web payments, but from my own experience I would recommend the following:

Firstly, forget about taking payments through an SSL cert. No acquiring bank will give you a merchant account to do this any more. People used to use a cnp agreement to do this, but with the advent of PCI DSS this has been stopped. You could acquire pci dss to get round this, but it is time consuming, complex and expensive.*

Join the FSB. It costs £100 pa plus a one-off £30 setup fee. This will give you access to free banking with the Co-Op and more importantly, reduced costs with Streamline. Merchant account setup with Streamline is currently £75.00, but free to FSB members. You will need two accounts to process your payments: one for e-commerce (online payments) and one for offline payments: either a MOTO account or a cnp agreement with a pdq. So FSB membership saves you £20 without even trying. It will also give you better rates, reduced pdq rental costs, and there is no minimum monthly charge, which could be handy for a startup business.

*If you use a pdq/cnp agreement, you will still need to be compliant, but it's much easier to achieve.

Like I said there is no right or wrong way to do this, it depends on the individual circumstances, but I hope this helps.

[acompton]

I believe the OP was asking about taking Chip & PIN payments in the shop as well as web payments online. I seem to remember that you need two separate merchant accounts for this, as the fee structures are different. Plenty of advice here: www.electronic-payments.co.uk (requires registration for some sections).

[cobbler]

Absolutely right.

As I said in the previous post:
You will need two accounts to process your payments: one for e-commerce (online payments) and one for offline payments: either a MOTO account or a cnp agreement with a pdq.

By "offline payments" I meant both cnp and/or face to face transactions. (I didn't mention face to face because they don't apply to my particular circumstances, but the principle is the same.)

Sorry for any confusion

[Anterweb]

Thanks so much for the info, All seems a lot clearer now.

Like I said I have experience with online sales but was looking for advice on using both cnp in a face to face shop and online payments and your advice is a great help

I will let you know what direction I go and how it goes,

Thanks again

Anthony

[plantshop]

With your internet merchant account you should get a virtual terminal through which you can process cards

[TraceyHand]

With your internet merchant account you should get a virtual terminal through which you can process cards

Actually that's an option that would come with your PSP, not your merchant account.
Doesn't mean it's ok to use it for face to face transactions though.