You dont have to pay extra anymore for the virtual terminal unless you want to be able to enter them yourself manually. When they checkout now, they can just use a CC with no paypal account....I guess its been like that for a while now, but paypal didn't tell anyone already paying the $30 a month...I turned mine off about 10 months ago, people still use CC just fine. Paypal still handles all the security stuff, so no issues about CC info getting hacked from your site...
And there is no such thing as a bad ass CC processor....they are all crooks. For the amount of volume you will do, you won't even be a blip on the radar.
Seems to be over complicating something for no reason...
While paypal isn't perfect, wait to you deal with a CC processor when something goes wrong....will make paypal look like a cakewalk.
Later EddieO
I'm wanting to get away from page redirects, unless you pay the $30 a month you have to redirect away from your store to a paypal payment page. The quicker and more painless a check out is, there will be less incompleted sales.
As for the CC processor, to make my life extremely easy and have a fully pci compliant system. $80ish a month will give me a very nice setup. The customer will enter their credit card # directly on the checkout page, they can save cards and manage them in their account page, and I'll have full control on the back end so when I modify a customer's order per their request. I can charge their card the additional amount, refund the difference, and more with the click of a button after I adjust their order. It's completely PCI compliant and I don't store any cc info. I just can't abuse the power because then shit will hit the fan.
Will I pay $80 a month, no. But the main purpose of my new site is because I'm building another site for someone else, and they want CC billing because they sell to industrial customers who won't touch paypal. So I'm looking at options they can afford and/or options we can both afford.
Right now, I'm leaning towards using stripe. Which is seems like a great option. Unfortunately, the easy module install is the most basic install and only allows for full refunds from my back end and a very basic saved cards functionality. (But this is much better than my current paypal system)
However, module development is well documented and stripe is VERY well documented for creating a custom checkout. I need to do some further research, but I think I can make a stripe payment module that will allow for complete back end payment control as I mentioned I could get for the $80 a month, and still be fully pci compliant because I am not storing any credit card information. If this is the case, I'm going to offer the bare bones stripe checkout initially and develop the module for expanded backend capabilities.
What is going to go "wrong" with a cc processor that is so much more of hassle to deal with than paypal? I do realize that a cc processor has chargeback fees, but I'm inclined to think that people only go through the hassle of calling their cc company to file a claim in true events where it is needed. Where in paypal, they have a quick and easy dispute button. I don't understand why people will file a dispute 3 days after an order has been placed and haven't gotten a shipping confirmation email WITHOUT even trying to contact me first. 80% of the disputes I've dealt with was because people never attempted contact with me to get an answer. The other 20% there was some form of communication before hand, they were either rather impatient or I didn't see their message. If I get less chargebacks than disputes, I will be a very happy camper. Because the time spent dealing with a dispute is probably worth the amount of a chargeback.
