Choosing The Right Payment Processor

Selecting a wrong online payment processor can drive your customers away and kill any chance of your online business succeeding. You may not even know why your business is failing.

Google has developed a checkout system to compete with other online merchant service providers. This is a rewarding market for them and it is a service that is in high demand by online sellers.

Online businesses are often start-up's who need a way to accept credit cards but do not want to go through the headaches involved in setting up a merchant credit card account. Tying up with an online credit card charging service is much easier. Most services allow you to create a simple purchase link that you can place on your website. You can sign-up and start selling your product in minutes.

But wait, it is not so simple.

Usually when Google develops a system, it is foolproof. They have done an excellent job with their Adwords and Ad sense systems. These are researched programs and the people running them are very educated.
That is why I was shocked to find that Google Checkout is so poorly designed.

Here is a Comparison.

When paying through PayPal using a credit card, you have a clearly stated buyer security policy and PayPal makes it easy to file for a repayment if you do not receive your order. This is not the case with Google Checkout. Once you pay through Google Checkout, there is no facility to file a grievance for non-receipt. On the classify page for Google Checkout, there is no mention of any buyer security or fraud prevention. That is because there is no protection. They force you to contact the seller and if the seller is unwilling to ship the item you paid for, you have no other recourse than to file for a charge reversal with your credit card company. If you have filed for a exchange before, you know what a pain that can be and then have to cancel your card and wait for a new card to arrive.

Here is a typical scenario. I purchased a DVD set from uBid, which uses Google Checkout as their payment processor. My card was charged and I received a memo the next day with a USPS Priority Mail tracking number. Three weeks later I still did not have my DVD set. I checked the tracking number, which showed that my order was never shipped. I checked my Google account where I found no buyer security options.

The only option I had was of contacting uBid, which I did. They had not responded even after three days. I then went to the uBid site and tried to contact them through their website. When I submitted the form, I received a big red-letter message saying they did not accept Google Checkout inquiries. After some web research, I came to know that uBid has a history of failing to ship purchases.

So, an online payment processor can make or break your business.

Setup a credit card processing merchant accounts to accept credit cards today!