[Cabal] Credit Cards

[Kevin M Stange]

Sean Egan wrote:
> I got the quote on this today, and filled out the paperwork. Credit
> card processing is *complicated*, and I'll try to explain our rates
> the best I can. The best measure, though, is that my girlfriend
> wouldn't stop marveling every time she saw a waived fee or low rate.
> 
> Visa and Mastercard both have tons of different card types (probably
> about 40 each), all with different rates, and we have no clue what
> those rates are until after it's charged. Each transaction takes a
> flat fee, ranging from nothing to $30, and they take a percentage,
> ranging from .1% to 3%. These are the fees applied by the credit card
> companies and are, as such, unavoidable.
> 
> To cover the cost, the processing company also has a percentage and
> flat fee. The rates we're offered are .05% (Elie says the lowest she's
> ever seen is .1%), and a 10 cent flat fee. Additionally, there is a
> batch fee: you typically send your transactions in to be processed
> once a day, so every day that has transactions will get charged
> another dime.
> 
> The processors also charge a $5 monthly fee.
> 
> Lastly, there's a gateway fee; the gateway is the bit that takes our
> transactions from the Internet and sends them to the processor. They
> recommend authorize.net which they claim is the cheapest for what we
> need. They will cost us $20 to setup, a $5 monthly fee, and a nickel
> per transaction. There's plenty of free software we can install on
> pidgin.im that speaks the authorize.net protocol.
> 
> I'm assured that this is a very good deal.
> 

We do processing here at my company through the authorize.net gateway
and it seems to work fairly well and have decent rates.  You can also do
processing through a "gateway" like PayPal.  I wasn't here for the early
part of this thread, so I have no idea what this is about.  Is there an
archive or can someone fill me in?

It's possible I can get some information relevant to card processing
from work which might be useful here.

Kevin

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