Alternative payment providers?

[sub]

Does this look promising?

http://www.paymex.co.nz/

I emailed them some questions yesterday - just waiting to hear back.

[sub]

Nochex have been around a while. I've used them to make payments (years ago) but not for accepting payments, though.

I'm pretty sure they're UK sellers only.

[sub]

Have you looked at WorldPay?

In the 'Select your country' box there's an option for New Zealand which is at least a promising start...no idea about fees or anything else.

I think they must have a reasonable reputation as I used to have a credit card which I had to pay each month using WorldPay.

I'll check them out. It looks like they have $450 per year fee though, so they might not be practical on a low income project like this.

[steeb]

I emailed them some questions yesterday - just waiting to hear back.

Nice. Hopefully something positive from them. They only take Visa and MasterCard by the looks of it but that should be OK? No fees either from what I can see. And they have good code they have provided that could be incorporated into the new website, even a 'special' donations thingy....

fingers crossed

[psycik]

What about moneybookers.com similar concept to paypal i think.

[sub]

Grrr - add paymate.com to the list of useless companies. They sounded good. I successfully went though the process of setting up an account with them, supplying all sorts of business info, creating a separate account they could use for deposits and charge backs etc. Finally got around to enabling it on the web site, and got a first nice NZ$50 donation come through in the 'waiting to clear' status, then received an email stating:

Thank you for your interest in a merchant account. Regretfully, we are unable to approve your application for payment processing services at this time, because we currently do not accept donations for any merchants other than well known charities.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

I dont understand why this account was rejected? I'm a registered company in New Zealand, and pay tax on any income I receive. I had also setup separate buttons for those payments that would come from New Zealand residents, so that I could determine which payments need be included on my GST return. When I registered my paymate account I clearly identified my business details, and I did not try to pass myself off as a charity.

Is the objection that I chose to use the 'donate now' buttons on my web page? Should I have instead have selected the 'Pay Now' option? Its entirely up to my users if they pay any money, when they do it's up to them how much they pay, so this seemed an appropriate choice. If this was a mistake, and implies 'charity', then please re-enable my account to give me the chance to correct it.

Hopefully you will reconsider this action.

The problem is not your “donate now” button. We simply do not provide payment processing services for donations. Usually our merchants are selling a product.

I am selling a product. They are installing my software, deciding how much it is worth, then paying for it it.

Are you worried about credit card charge backs or similar? Surely this model has near zero risk for charge backs, since the user has already thoroughly tried the product to decide if it meets there needs before paying anything. I've never had a user ask for their money back before.

I forwarded the information from your account to my supervisor and she has informed me that we simply cannot accept it.

Grrrr :mad:

[steeb]

Grrr - add paymate.com to the list of useless companies.
Grrrr :mad:

Unbelievable You must be very frustrated. Is our money not good enough for them

The last response doesn't even give a good reason to decline it. What next?

[sub]

Unbelievable You must be very frustrated. Is our money not good enough for them

The last response doesn't even give a good reason to decline it. What next?

To be honest, I dont know.

I looked at other options today. Several would only sell tangible products that are phyically shipped to the buyer's address. Several others have regular monthly fees, which doesnt work for me (since we often have months with no donations).

[johnsonx42]

I'm curious whether paypal ever released the money they stole from you months ago, or returned it to the original payers? Or do they just keep the money?

Perhaps a way to work around all these problems where the payment services don't like these optional and variable payment terms, is just have a single "Buy Now" button where the user is buying a 'license' for the current version of the software on it for a fixed price, say $15 or $20. Whenever anyone 'buys' the software, you just send them a 'Thanks for your purchase' e-mail with the download link. Anyone can buy the software as many times as they like, or buy it once, or buy it whenever a new version comes out. You could even ship a physical CD; just buy a stack of blank CD's and some of those cheap cardboard mailers, burn a few dozen, and mail one off each time someone buys the software... even better, sign each one; I'm sure many fans of NPVR would enjoy having an NPVR CD hand-autographed by the great and benevolent sub!

edit: actually on further thought, don't even say the software or license is being purchased at all... just sell the autographed NPVR CD itself.

[sub]

edit: actually on further thought, don't even say the software or license is being purchased at all... just sell the autographed NPVR CD itself.

The thought of selling autographed photos of myself did cross my mind.

Or NextPVR stickers. $10 each. You pick how many stickers you want.