HSBC Secure ePayments

[Ian Clyde]

Hi,

With the demise of HSBC’s Secure ePayments (changing over to Global Iris) I’m wondering if there are any better payment gateways to chose? I’m looking for simple integration and obviously cost competitiveness. Can anyone offer any views? Is Actinic Payments a good option?

Thanks in advance....

[Duncan Rounding]

Actinic Payments is very good and integrates very well into the backend.

[feemish]

Hi Duncan,

If I take around 450 transactions a month, Sellerdeck payments will cost me £40 a month on Actinic payments 40.
SecureEpayments was £20 a month, and Global Iris will be the same... so half the price.. are there any savings I am missing ?.. or is Sellerdeck payments a more expensive (but also better integrated) option?

[feemish]

I can see there are quite a few features on Actinic payments that probably arent available on Global Iris....

Can anyone show me a link to a nicely integrated actinic payments page on a website?

[Golf Tee Warehouse]

If I take around 450 transactions a month, Sellerdeck payments will cost me £40 a month on Actinic payments 40.

If you regularly take less than 550 transaction per month then Actinic 20 may be cheaper.

450 transaction would only cost £30 on Actinic Payments (£20 + 100 x £0.10), Actinic 40 only becomea cheaper once you exceed 550 transactions per month and Actinic 200 when you exceed 2600 transactions.

[feemish]

oh yeah.. good point, thanks Darren.. still a bit more expensive, but only a tenner a month.

[Ian Clyde]

Thanks all. I think I'm going to regret this but I'm going to have to confess how little I know about all this. At the moment with HSBC ePayments all I know is I'm billed £20 per month plus varying %age rates (or flat rate) on each tranaction depending on the card type.

Each day I go into the user front end of ePayments, click shipped on the transactions, and the money flies over to my HSBC Business Account.

So....if I change to either Realex or Actinic Payments I pay them the going monthly charge and I then have to find a 'Merchant Bank Account' and its them that actually processes the money and charges the % rates???

When you've stopped laughing can someone explain?!!

Thanks.....

[feemish]

first off, I'm a little confused by all this as well, but as I understand it..

If you are using Secure E payments, then you have a merchant account with HSBC and Secure Epayments as the PSP. The Secure Epayments charge of £20 appears on your HSBC Merchant charges invoice every month.

You can keep your HSBC merchant account.. you just change the PSP. If you stick with Realex, you will still be charged £20 a month... if you leave and go with AP then you will stop paying the £20 and give that instead to Actinic.

[Ian Clyde]

ahhhhh....now I see.....many thanks Mark! So when i was talking to Actinic today and the guy said I would need to supply a Merchant ID if I switched to Actinic Payments then this would remain as my current Merchant ID with HSBC?

[feemish]

yes thats right.

[Ian Clyde]

great, many thanks Mark

[Ian Clyde]

So....having now spoken with the Realex rep at HSBC and read/listened to the Actinic Payments sales blurb on the site it would seem to me with the added plus of all the integrated capability which Actinic Payments provides and the downside of Realex that they have a problem with being able to accept Amex payments then its a no-brainer to go with Actinic Payments. For me the cost will remain the same at £20 per month so no issues there.

Grateful for any thoughts from anyone on either side of the argument?

[feemish]

it's a difficult decision for me..
I really like the fact that the HSBC Secure epayments page went through to a branded HSBC page at the URL HSBC.com.

The Realex solution can be integrated into a page that looks like its part of your site.. which is a nice touch.. if you think people trust you.. but the realex URL shopandpay.com is not known to me.. so is a bit worrying.

The same goes for Actinic Payments.. how many of my customers would have heard of Actinic.. not many.. but do people care? Maybe I am too paranoid and most people just bash their credit details out all over the place with little concern. The integration of Actinic is certainly a bonus..

I'm looking at Sage Pay as well.. Sage is a PSP I have come across a lot when I'm online shopping.. so I feel there is more brand awareness of them..

Its a bloomin difficult choice.. so many options all doing things slightly differently.

[Ian Clyde]

Hmmm...thats a good point regarding known brands although probably a risk I'm prepared to take. I guess you risk losing one or two customers along the way but of course this will show in the trend of the number of aborted orders.

Being a tecno-idiot the prospect of easy integration plus easy functionality within Actinic back-end will probably swing it for me. I'll ponder for a while yet....

[feemish]

the integration is undoubtably the best selling point of Actinic Payments.