Issue #137

The Jewelry Crafter

A newsletter for the home jeweler

Custom Jewelry Supply - Supplies for the Jewelry Designer or Wire Artist

The Jewelry Crafter Archive - Back issues full of useful information for your jewelry business

Newsletter July 15, 2009

This newsletter will be published every 2 weeks, and will include hints and tips for your jewelry business. Any feedback or comments about the topics presented here are always appreciated. Click here to e-mail us.

If you have an idea for an upcoming article, or would like to submit an article for the newsletter, please contact us. Anyone who submits an article will receive a permenant link to their website in a special section of our link pages.

Accepting Payments on Your Website

by Mary Harvey

Now that you have a website, you need to have a way to accept payments. It has been shown that if you accept credit cards, you will increase your sales. Here are some ways to accept credit cards on your website:

PayPal - The easiest way to accept payments on your website is Paypal. It’s a complete E-commerce solution for your website. You can accept all major credit cards and cash payments from your customers, and you can send money to anyone with an e-mail address. Paypal also has a nice shopping cart and a “buy now” button creator so you can create custom buttons for each of your products. There are lots of merchant tools available, too. There are no setup fees, and no monthly fees to use Paypal. A set fee is charged per transaction, however. It’s a great way to start out accepting website payments.

The following require some sort of shopping cart software to accept orders and collect credit card numbers. A good cart is from Mals E-Commerce. They offer 2 different carts - a free cart and a more robust cart that offers more payment and management options. Mals also has a button creator so you can add your inventory and link it to your cart. You may also want to check with your website host as many offer shopping carts that can be installed on our site and integrate with the payment solutions below:

ProPay - Another way to accept website payments is Propay. There are several different accounts which have various features and pricing. The basic account costs $34.95 annually with a 3.5% +.35 cent fee on each transaction. The basic account allows you to process via the internet only, and has a monthly processing limit of $1000. The Premium account runs $59.95 per year, but allows you to take Discover and American Express along with Visa and Mastercard, and you can process by telephone. The monthly processing limit for the Premium account starts at $3000, and the fees are a little bit less than the Basic account. Processed funds are deposited into your Propay account within 1-3 business days. You then can transfer the funds to your bank account.

2Checkout.com - A third way to accept all major credit cards on your website is 2checkout.com. They offer a shopping cart, but it also works with Mals shopping cart, and others. As of this time, 2checkout only works with online sales. You cannot use it for telephone orders. There is a $49 setup fee, and each transaction has a fee of 5.5% + .45 cents. Payments are calculated every Wednesday, and issued every Thursday, but you have to meet the minimum amounts in order to be paid.

Other services that will allow you to accept online payments are AuthorizeNet, Charge.com, and SecurePay.

Traditional Merchant Accounts - If you do a search on the internet for merchant accounts, literally hundreds come up. If you want more than the above payment solutions offer, there are full-fledged merchant accounts available for that allow you to take online payments, as well as payments at shows, and use either a web based terminal, physical terminal, or telephone authorization to charge the customer. These usually have monthly fees ranging from $9.99 to $30 or more , in addition to the discount fee (the percentage fee that the credit card company deducts from each sale), and may charge extra to take American Express and Discover. If you do a lot of shows, as well as online sales, you can get wireless terminals, or terminals that can do a “store and forward” (you get the swiped card rate, but the terminal stores the info for batch download at a later date). Usually, with a merchant account, you get much cheaper discount rates if you swipe the card versus punching numbers in manually because the terminal will do an address verification on the card.

Whatever payment solution you choose, be sure to check them out thoroughly and ask questions. Make sure you know the fees and discount rates, and if it will work with your website before you sign up.