One thing you can do if you are unsure about any new company you will be doing business with is to run a Google search for CompanyName Complaints. Peolpe tend to be pretty vocal when they have a bad experience on the net, so if there is any dirt to be found that should dig it up.

I am trying to find a payment processor that is friendy to accepting payments for betting systems. Do you know of any? I used to use paypal, but they are cracking down on it a bit now.

Thanks,
Ben

None of the ‘peer to peer’ solutions (Paypal, Google, Money Bookers, etc) will let manually charge a customer’s card an additional amount. This is to be expected because many times the merchants using these services are not registered businesses, but individual sellers, so the payment information needs to be protected a little more. Most of these services do, however, allow you to setup recurring billing, but you still don’t actually have the ability to charge the user at will.

Authorize.net actually keeps your customer’s payment information on file and allows you to make charges to their card in the way you are describing. I believe you can also make changes to the final amount charged between the time when the card was charged and when payment is settled.

I have never had the opportunity to try this with MiraPay.

Hope this answers your question.

P.S. Most of these processors will allow you to create a developer’s, test or demo account which is a great way to find out all of the pros and cons of each. And try not to limit yourself to a single processor, as each has its own strong points in different projects.

Great brief summary. Can you elaborate on the pros/cons of the actual processing, or on the virtual terminals offered by these processors?

For example, some processors allow you to charge the customer a bit more than was pre-authorized. This is useful if the customer calls after placing their order and says “Can I pay extra to have this shipped overnight?”. With some processors, you’d have to ask the customer for their card info again. Others will let you add that charge to the original transaction.

-jared

Thanks for the insight on how this is handled ‘down under’.

Anyone else have some insight on other payment processors from around the world?

-Dan

A nice, concise summary. I’ve used a local bank processor offering a service like Authorise.Net. We call them payment gateways down here but essentially they allow merechants to accept credit-card transactions online.
I now use PayPal which is much less expensive and works fine. Paypal and Google checkout, which we don’t have downunder as yet, I think of as Peer -to-peer services.
One final contribution is that Intabill is headquartered in Australia but doesn’t offer its services locally or, indeed, use local banks.

Regards
Stewart Carter
eCommerce Report