Accepting credit card payments without a merchant account

[johnsmith180]

Hi All
Recently, I have been doing alot of reading about setting up an ecommerce shop. I have come up with some questions, I hope you can answer them.

I believe to set up an ecommerce shop, you need one of the following :

1 - An ecommerce software. This software will allow me to create product description. This software will also have a shopping cart. But this software WILL NOT accept credit card payments. In order to accept credit card payments, I need to have a merchant account.

2 - I believe there are some web-shops that provide shopping carts. These web-shops also ACCEPT credit card payments from customers (I will not need to have a merchant account with these web-shops).

I have special requirements:

I want to setup 5 different ecommerce shops, selling different products; and I dont have a merchant account. Therefore, I think I need a web-shop software that I can use to create product descriptions, shopping cart AND accept cedit card payments.

Am I correct???

Could you identify some good web-shop software for United Kingdom.

kind regards

[Musicbox]

download oscommerce shopping cart software and configure the payment settings!

You are ready to sell your products!

[Philky]

You can use a third party payment processor instead of a merchant. 2Checkout and Paypal are examples of third party payment processors. You should be able to integrate these into OsCommerce or whatever software you choose.

[stymiee]

download oscommerce shopping cart software and configure the payment settings!

You are ready to sell your products!

You still need a merchant account to process the sales wther it be a true merchant account or third party provider.

[xredvette6]

A 3rd party provider is a good option if you will be processing less than $1000 per month. If you plan on being over that, getting your own merchant account may be more economical in the long run. Don't forget about the payment gateway as well.

[johnsmith180]

Well, when you are starting in new territories, you never know how things will turn up.

Therefore, rather than spending too much with merchant accounts, I am looking for a low cost service.

With 1 merchant account, is it possible to process payments on more than one site???

[stymiee]

With 1 merchant account, is it possible to process payments on more than one site???

You shouldn't want to. The name of the business associated with the merchant account will appear on your customers' statements. If it doesn't match the name of the business they did business with they most likely will chargeback that sale. Then you lose that money, the product, and if you get enough chargebacks (and you almost certianly will) your merchant account and probably your ability to have a true merchant account.

[pengrus]

I just recently found 2CO/2checkout do not show our business name on the billing statement of our customer, so we get chargeback as customer do not recognize our annual subscription charge. Is it true that 2CO/2Checkout does not put your business name on the statement?

Thanks!