Re: FN-FORUM Online payment help & recommendations...

date posted 2nd September 2000 11:36

>The Barclays web site states that our client must register to a 'Payment
>Service Provider' and these are listed at
>http://www.bms.barclays.co.uk/providers/providers.html I would be very
>interested as to any of your views or recommendations regarding any of the
>listed companies. I am also suspicious of an overlap in the services
>provided by the PSP and Barclays.

There's a comparison of PSPs at:

www.floyd.co.uk

It indicates which one integrates with which Merchant Account Provider
and compares rates. Could be a good starting point.

The only one I have used was NetBanx, with HSBC as the Merchant Account.
They were competent and gave plenty of help with the integration process.
The whole process took three or four weeks from initial application to
the site going live.

>I am also suspicious of an overlap in the services provided by the PSP and
Barclays.

As I understand it, the roles of the two organisations are as follows. If
anyone on the list knows better, I am happy to be corrected!:-)

The PSP provides a secure server to host your credit card payment page
and firewalls and stuff, along with a template payment page for you to
customise with your customers logo . Plus help and advice and tech
support with the integration and testing. When the site is live,
customers credit card details go to their server, not to you or your
client. They handle all of the security issues assiociated with that. The
advantage to you and your client is that you never see customers CC
details so you and they cannot be accused of fraud. Also it makes end
customers more confident about using their card online because they are
dealing with a big respectable organisation like NetBanx or WorldPay, not
with your customer who could be ripoffmerchants.com for all they know.
The PSP links to the Merchant Services Bank at the time of the
transaction and receives a yes or no from the bank immediately and sends
a transaction accepted/rejected email to your client and their customer.

The Merchant Account Provider, on the other hand, receives a payment
authorisation request from the PSP and checks within the banking computer
network whether the customer's credit card is valid for that payment and
says yes or no to the PSP. If yes, it carries out the transaction within
the banking network, transferring funds to your clients account and
billing the customer's credit card account.

So they do fulfill separate roles.


Hope this helps,

Ray McGinty

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Ray McGinty Information Design
specialising in design for the web, e-commerce,
multimedia CD-ROM and print
Tel 0191 237 2816
Fax 0191 237 4774
[EMAIL REMOVED]
www.rmid.co.uk
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