Actinic Payments or Sage Pay... a quick concensus!

[rumapop]

Hello,

I am looking at moving from HSBC merchant account & ePayments to Streamline and either Actinic Payments or Sage Pay.

I am aware that this has been deliberated plenty of times but there are pro’s & con’s for us at the moment for both gateways – both seem to have had ups & downs which looks to have been sorted, but not sure on overall performance.

I’d be really grateful if anyone who has knowledge of any of the above and a spare 2 mins to give me a quick yes or no as to system stability/customer usability/internal usability.

Thanks in advance
Lucy

[Golf Tee Warehouse]

Personally I would go with Actinic Payments mainly because it is integrated into the software, so you can void and refund payments, etc without leaving the Actinic Software.

I have been using it for several months and have had no problems and get very few drop outs compared to NoChex (my previous card processor).

[plantsforshade]

We have looked at actinic payments and will probably open an account for MOTO transactions. But the lack of customer emails is stopping us moving from sage pay for online transactions. Plus we had a big swing to Paypal post the change from PROTX to Sage Pay due to customers not trusting the new name, generally speaking Sage Pay is getting known now days and Actinic Payments is not, customer trust is everything.

Regards

Nigel

[leehack]

Of the two Actinic Payments for sure. At least you know who to call when there's a problem. It's integration with the software makes them the only PSP that can do that at the moment which is a big plus. PROTX/Sagepay have problems as all companies do, but ownership of a problem seems very woolley to me with them. It may all be Actinic's fault, it's hard to say, but all they seem to do is point at each other and blame each other. There seems no way out of that currently, with just the customer suffering.

However, personally I would not consider moving to either of them from HSBC as HSBC is the pinnacle solution in my eyes. If your site is just earning pocket money and an unknown name in PSP terms does not bother you, then go Actinic Payments, if not, then stick where you are IMO.

What's your issue with HSBC? Cost I presume? I think it's worth the extra cost.

[markburley]

We have used Sage Pay for many months and have just switched to Actinic Payments after a 3 month trial. I would recommend Actinic Payments because the 3rd Man (Fraud Detection) is very easy to use and the MOTO payments are so well integrated within Actinic.

We have not seen any drop in custom since we switched to Actinic Payments - in fact I feel that it has made transactions easier. We did spend time customising the payment screens with our details (this was very easy) and I think that this has helped reassure customers.

The only thing that I can think of that is better in Sage Pay is the reporting - it is quicker than within Actinic although once you have found your way round in Actinic the reports are better - just slow!

Overall I would recommend Actinic Payments.

[rumapop]

Thanks for the replies, a bit of background info for anyone who’s interested:

Moving from HSBC, because they are very costly and until now this hasn’t bothered me too much because I felt the service was good, and I am believer that the cheapest isn’t always the best. However there virtual terminal is “clunky” and I feel outdated. In the past few months I have had to contact them regarding some queries and there aftersales service/technical info has been very poor. Likewise, I rang for a review of our rates (we have good sales growth in the past 2 yrs since we have been with them), to be told “no” and did I wish to close the account.

Then looked at moving just the gateway away from them & then once I had some figures in from Streamline, decided it was definitely time to move the merchant accounts as well; Streamline also seem to have a very good reputation (?!).

Then just in turmoil about the gateway. Actinic seems perfect because it will save a lot of administration time in the office, however not so good as I don’t feel they’re recognised enough by the customer, I’m frustrated at the additional set-up costs for new users (6 merchant accounts, 4 users) etc and we often use the partial shipment feature in HSBC which doesn’t appear to be available.

SagePay seem happy to work with us consolidating set-up charges and monthly charges for all merchant accounts, they offer a 24hr technical support which I think is a big plus and we work with Sage products & cover at the moment and are impressed with their over-all level of service. That said I am concerned at the amount of posts on the forum about problems, but is that because they have a higher amount of customers than other PSP’s?

I guess with all of them it’s 6 of one and half a dozen of the other. Ultimately there has to be a balance between the customer feeling comfortable and happy with the experience which I think HSBC will score highly with, internal usability therefore saving time which Actinic should score well with and costs and service which I think Sage Pay should do best with.

Sorry, what set out to be a short & sweet post seems to have ended up being lengthier than I first envisaged!

Thanks again for the feedback.

[cbarling]

Lucy, obviously I am totally biased, but here's my perspective on service.

If you look at the last few years, Actinic Payments (which is Creditcall behind the scenes) has been very, very reliable. We have had two outages this year (one of which didn't stop payments being taken and only impacted a minority of merchants), but that's still left other people well behind. Creditcall's availability has been 99.998% since Nov 2005.

It's true that Actinic don't have 24 hour telephone support. However, we do have 24 x 7 monitoring and response, from both ourselves and Creditcall. In other words, if there's a problem out of hours, poeple are working on it. In practise, I can't envisage when there needs to be contact between the merchant and Actinic in order to fix the sort of problem that happens out of hours. That's why we don't supply such a service.

Just my tuppence worth.

Chris

[rumapop]

Chris,

Thank you for your points regarding service, all of which I take on board – regarding pricing, do you know if there are any plans to develop a pricing structure for Business Plus Users to band merchant id’s together, I think there would be a high demand for this service – other PSP’s I have spoken with are prepared to offer this as an option.

Also (you’ll regret posting now!!) do you know of anything in the pipeline that would allow the partial shipment of a pre-authorised order – therefore allowing the initial transaction to be broken down into 2 or 3 payments/despatches - this is handy for items which may have to be placed on back-order?

Thanks

Lucy

[markburley]

We place orders which are pre-authorised and then part ship and only collect money for the items shipped, the other items are placed on a back order and money collected when finally shipped. This works very well and has caused no problems.

One thing to remember is that the original pre-auth will only last a few days and therefore the back order may fail authorisation when the money is collected, however this is not a failing of Actinic but how the system works regardless of PSP.

Mark

[rumapop]

Hi Mark,

Thanks for your message - this is really interesting as I have been deliberating about this with the AP sales team & thy passed it to support, who concluded this was not possible.

In an ideal world we'd just debit the initial transaction in 2 stages, as you do. Support told me I'd have to re-debit the card & void the first payment, which I thought could get long-winded and confusing in busy times.

Thanks for ironing this out

[PatchworkRabbit]

So, now I'm confused. Is it possible with AP or not? LOL

[cbarling]

Yes, it's possible.

Obviously someone in support has got the wrong end of the stick so we're ensuring there is some communication about this in the support team.

Chris

[Neil Bayton]

Hi Lucy,

In an earlier post you state

I’m frustrated at the additional set-up costs for new users (6 merchant accounts, 4 users)

Can you elaborate on what you are trying to achieve and I will look into costings for you.

You can e-mail me on nbayton@actinic.co.uk or call me direct on 01932358348 to discuss.

Rgds
Neil Bayton
Admin Manager

[chris ashdown]

How do the rates compare with each PSP, this was a big problem for me when we first contacted Actinic as Protx were far cheaper on our turnover

Streamline are first class though and well worth checking out, we did use cardnet who use to charge both arms and legs

[Darren]

In regards to part commits:

Once a part commit has been done, it effectively completes the transaction. However, so long as you are using MOTO payments, you can use the 'Pay' button the charge the balance.

Also you should be able to commit a preauthorised transaction beyond 3 days, however you may get a 'late settlement charge' from the bank

Hope that makes sense.