Any reviews of "PaymentSense" Merchant Services

[cbarling]

We charge a fee for our integration kit, then the payment provider does the integration and we (Actinic) will test it and and add it in to our product.

That's the way that we've worked for years.

I won't go into a long explanation but essentially it's because we pick up cost and the payment provider picks up all of the revenue.

Have you looked at Actinic Payments? It's ultra-reliable, much more well integrated into Actinic than any other PSP meaning you should save time, a lot in some cases, and it's well priced.

Chris

[Sean Williams]

Thanks for the clarity Chris - appreciated.
We do have an AP account actually.

The attraction of PaymentSense is the attached, free Merchant Account.
This is attractive as we have four (soon to be five) websites and Merchant providers always seem to require a separate account for each one.
I see you have an offer with Cardnet (we bank with Lloyds) but honestly we have had poor service from them and would like to move on.
Just one example, they insist on separate accounts for online and MOTO, for which they charge twice. We don't use MOTO.
They are insisting we are PCI DSS compliant. We use compliant servers and don't take card details.
Plus, very hard to deal with.

Does anyone use HSBC or Barclaycard Services?

[fleetwood]

Hi Sean

I use the Actinic Payments gateway as I assumed best integration with Actinic software, and just use PaymentSense as my payment acquirer.
PS tried to push me into using their own gateway, and insisted that I would have to pay for the gateway, even if I didn't use it, but I said no, and they accepted it.

All works great, although I don't have the rates that were quoted by OP.
The rates I quoted were for my shop transactions (which work out cheaper than Streamline). The web transactions are at a higher rate, which I assumed was normal, but would love to heasr comparisons. Our web trans costs at PS are 2.1% and 29p debit - how does that compare with Streamline? (we never had a web account with Streamline, just store based account).

[Sean Williams]

Hello Martin
thanks for the reply.
I'm a bit confused - perhaps you could clear this up for me.

You are using AP as your payment processor, so you pay them the usual rates.
Then you are using PaymentSense as the Merchant Account to catch the processed payments from AP? (which are then paid into your bank account?)
So how are PaymentSense charging you?
They aren't charging for each payment process as AP are taking that, so are they charging for each credit to their Merchant account? Or something!

Cheers

[fleetwood]

Hi Sean

They aren't charging for each payment process as AP are taking that, so are they charging for each credit to their Merchant account?

The Simple Answer:
PS charge a percentage in the same way as all other MA providers.
They also charge for PCI compliance, per account - I think the fee for quarterly monitoring, was £35 pa, but thats off the top of my head.
Not sure what you mean by 'free account', but its only free in terms of no sign up fee - you still pay percentage fees, as per all other MA's.
AP take a per transaction fee to act as a gateway, which is in addition to the MA percentage

(sorry, I hadn't read prvious posts fully, so you probably don't need the long spiel below, but I will leave it there for others).

The Longer Answer:

To take credit card payments, for any type of transaction, you need a payment acquirer eg Streamline, FirstData (the acquirer that Payment Sense are linked to) etc.
These are the people that process your credit card payments and pay them into your bank account. This applies whether you take transactions face to face in a shop, or transactions via a website.

In addition to this, web based transactions must go through a payment gateway, whose job is to capture the credit card information, so that you as a retailer, don't access that information. Before things were tightened up a few years ago, many retailers used to capture card details for web transactions themselves, and process them through a terminal, but this is no longer allowed (and was never the correct way to do things anyway).
Most credit card aquirers also provide this gateway service.
Actinic payments is the gateway service set up by Actinic.

The acquirer takes a fee, being a percentage for credit cards, and usually a fixed charge for debit cards, plus they charge for a hardware terminal if you need one, and some, like Streamline, also charge a per call fee, for authorisation. Fees for web based transactions are usually a fair bit higher than those for shop face to face transactions.

The gateway takes a seperate fee, which can be a set montly cost, for a set number of transactions, or a per transaction fee, or both.

For shop face to face transactions, you just pay the acquirer fee.

For web transactions, you pay the acquirer fee (at the higher rate applicable to web trans), PLUS a gateway fee.

So we pay Payment Sense 1.3% for shop transactions, and 2.1% for web transactions, plus we also pay Actinic payments around 7p per transaction in gateway fees.

As I said in the previous post, Payment Sense prefer you to use their gateway, as they make more money that way, and so will try to insist that its part of the package, but it may not be as easy to integrate with Actinic (the software), and you can persuade them to drop the sales push. On the flip side, Actinic, prefer you to use Actinic Payments, as they too make money that way, but in fairness, it seems to work pretty seamlessly.

Apologies for repeating anything that you may already have known,. Just trying to make things as clear as poss.

I would be interested to know how much other retailers pay in acquirer and gateway fees on web trans.

[TraceyHand]

So how are PaymentSense charging you?
They aren't charging for each payment process as AP are taking that, so are they charging for each credit to their Merchant account?

That's only the same as other merchant accounts, such as Streamline. Usually a per transaction charge.
So you'd have one monthly fee to AP/Sagepay/whoever - often a fixed fee, upto a specific volume of transastions - and one bill to Streamline/PaymentSense.

sounds pretty normal to me

[mje]

I would be interested to know how much other retailers pay in acquirer and gateway fees on web trans.

Face to face over the counter.
"Streamline" into Nat West account.

• Mastercard Personal 1.58%
• Mastercard World 2.18%
• Visa Credit 1.55%
• Visa Debit 20.5p each
• Mastercard Business 2.1%
• Terminal rent £14.95 PCM + vat

Members of a trade organisation, part of the deal is no charge for authorisation etc.

Negotiating with Paymentsense, asked for a copy contract 10 days ago, but not recieved it yet......if you are reading this "paymentsense"...little things like service matter.


Since posting on this thread I have had a two calls from Cardnet, but they were way out of line with the current rates we pay.

Contacted Streamline to see if they would move nearer to Paymentsense rates, but got one of the nicest rejection letters I have ever read!.....

1.15% for credit cards and 13p for debit cards quoted by Paymentsense.

Streamline / Actinic payments for our website.

[Sean Williams]

Thank you both.
I don't know what I was thinking - my head was in a right old muddle about it, when of course it's simply the usual scenario. Der.
I would blame it on the cider, but I haven't drunk any for weeks.
Must be because I've just become a grandfather, but along with automatically attaining the moral high ground, I must have lost half my (functioning) neurons at the same time.
"I'm 85 you know"

[TraceyHand]

Must be because I've just become a grandfather,

congratulations, old man *smirks*

[leehack]

Oh well Sean at least the slippers and pipe gifts will come flooding in at December.

It's not a sign of age any more anyway, the record for youngest grandfather was recently reset at just 29 years old, to relay your real age we may need to call you a great great grandfather on that scale.

30 years is generally classed as a generation, that family managed to get three age groups within one generation with time to spare.

[mje]

Must be because I've just become a grandfather

Great feeling, isn't it....

[Sean Williams]

Oh well Sean at least the slippers and pipe gifts will come flooding in at December.

It's not a sign of age any more anyway, the record for youngest grandfather was recently reset at just 29 years old, to relay your real age we may need to call you a great great grandfather on that scale.

30 years is generally classed as a generation, that family managed to get three age groups within one generation with time to spare.

I'm a mere stripling. So said Sir Gerald Nabarro a fortnight before he was brown bread.

[Sean Williams]

Great feeling, isn't it....

It IS.
Can't understand why some peeps think it's the beginning of the end. I'm loving it.

[littlebt2001]

Premium Charge

I got a ok rate:

"Streamline" into HSBC account
[*]Mastercard Personal 1.23%[*]Mastercard World 1.93%[*]Visa Credit 1.23%[*]Visa Debit 15.50p each[*]Mastercard Business 1.88%[*]Terminal rent £15 includingVAT

but from sometime 2010, they started to charge high Premium Charge, I used to have a few pence premium charge in total, now it become £30-£40 each month. That is to say, if i was charge £23.57 for Master card personal,underneath this charge, there is an extra premium charge of £10.20 in my statement. i don't know what is this. Anyone has the same experience with me please?

I got a quote from payment sense, 1.15 credit, 13p debit, 1.8% business and world card. £20.88 Rental. But 5 year capped, if terminated earlier, will have to pay the rest of line rental, not just £200 as mentioned in one post here?

Regards

Jane

[mje]

Sorry Jane I have no idea what a premium charge is, although it might be something to do with these new cards that VISA and Mastercard have forced into the market - you can't not accept them, but they load the charges!

I am still dithering over this, the rep dropped a copy contract into my shop, and it looks just fine to me, but there is a £35 plus VAT a quarter charge for compliance, which currently Streamline don't charge us.

I expect we will stay with Streamline, better the devil you know and all that.

When you think about it, merchant service providers etc have no business without retailers and on-line shops, hotels and so on, so they really should consult rather than dictate!