Actually I'm not sure if it technically qualifies as a merchant account, but it is used to transfer money from other peoples credit cards to your "Propay" account. In essence working as a "merchant account".

NOTE: You must be a U.S. resident, 18 or older, with a valid Social Security number to apply for a Propay account. The first time you sign up with them, you need to MAIL them a check for the annual fee, after that you can pay it though your propay account.

Oh and on the customers credit card statement it will have YOUR email address. So it's best to use a "Professional" sounding email address when signing up with PROPAY like "order@XYZcomputers.com" instead of "XYZcomputers@yahoo.com" Once you have run the card, it will take a few days for the money to become available in your Propay account, THEN you can transfer it to your checking account.

The Annual fee breakdowns and benefits are as follows:

-----------------Annual fee------Processing-----Transfer--Processing limits
----------------------------------------Fee-------------FEE-----(per transaction/monthly)
*Basic------------$34.95-----3.50% + $0.35---$0.35-----$250/$1,000
Premium---------$59.95-----3.25% + $0.35---$0.30-----$500/$3,000
Premium Plus--$119.95-----2.99% + $0.30---$0.25-----$1,000/$5,000
Platinum--------$299.95-----2.69% + $0.25---$0.10-----$3,000/$15,000

*Accept VISA/MasterCard
*Process via internet
*Checking account transfers
Accept Discover
Accept American Express
Process via telephone
Linked debit MasterCard (this is a debit card for your PROPAY account)
Annual statement
(*Basic Program offers these 3 items ONLY) All others are included in the larger packages.

All the Credit Card information has to be manually entered into your secure Propay Account BUT there are NO monthly, gateway, or equipment fees of traditional merchant accounts.

If you offer products/services online or take phone orders (not needing a "terminal") Propay is a great way to get you started accepting Credit Cards. Once you are doing a LARGE volume of orders, you will probably want to upgrade to a true merchant account in which orders can be processed automatically via your website/shopping cart/merchant account.

I prefer to use Propay over "Paypal" because if I only offered Paypal I would have to EMAIL a customer (who calls me to place an order) an INVOICE before they could pay me. I CANNOT charge their card without that step using PAYPAL. And I find that inconvenient for me and the customer.

I hope this has helped someone who was looking for an inexpensive merchant account option. They have great customer service, I contacted them via their "online chat" before I had even signed up with a question and they were quick to help me out. I have never had a problem with "double-billing" or any other problems while running customers cards through them.

--Jane

Is this like a paypal accound and thats stuff ?

It's kindof like a paypal account... but you don't use "buy it now" buttons to sell your items online and your customer DOES NOT need a propay account for this to work.

To the customer ordering online, it doesn't look any different than ordering from a company that uses it's OWN merchant account. They still have to input all their credit card info online, and billing & shipping. The only difference is that when YOU get the CC info, you have to manually run it through the Propay website. Kindof like a "virtual" terminal.

You have to have a seperate shopping cart online that will get peoples credit card info (securely) and then you GO TO the propay website, login securely & then input the persons credit card info manually to "process" it.

Or as I mentioned in the first post, if you get most of your orders over the PHONE, you just go straight into the propay site & process the card, no need to email an INVOICE to your customer (like with PAYPAL) This was a big selling feature for me, since most of my orders come in over the phone.

Hope this helps explain it a little better. --Jane

This could be a way for credit cards stolers to transfer the money from the CCs into their pockets? Just asking. Leaving that apart, it's a very good service, but its big disadvantage it's that is only available in the United States.

Major services, offers international support. You may try ikobo.net or moneybookers.com, they are pretty the same, but they are international.

Thanks for letting us know about this site. Maybe it's going to extended in the future and be an alternative to paypal that has been already adopted by major sites.

I suppose their might be a way for Thieves to get money out of someones credit card, but you have to have an account with Propay to be able to get the funds. So a thief would either have to open a propay account & link it to their checking or they would have to somehow "highjack" a propay account & link it to their checking or something along those lines. It is set up with a secure server so I think hacking into it would probably be difficult.

As to the international thing... yes it is unfortunate that it is only for US residents right now. I wasn't even aware of that until I reccomended it to someone & they told me about it. (They were in Canada)

I checked out the ikobo.net site & they are a quite a bit more expensive than Propay. For me to use them to run a CC from United States to United States for $75 (a normal transaction for me) would cost me $7.25 in fees. Propay cost me $2.98.

The second site you mentioned, moneybookers.com is really more like paypal in that the person sending you has to create a "moneybookers" account.


So for me, the benefit of using Propay is two-fold. 1. It costs me less than other options. 2. My customer doesn't have to "register" with yet another payment processor. It is my understanding that Google has plans to Compete With Paypal and I can only hope that it will be the answer to all these issues.

--Jane

This does sound like a better alternative to paypal. The fees seem similar, except for the annual fee, and its really nice that someone making a purchase does not have to sign up for an account.

Well PayPal is free (for businesses, transistion fess, free for personal use) and ProPay is not. And you can't pay the annual fee through your credit card, you have to send a check.

Yes, you need to send the INITIAL annual fee in the form of a check, it is a security measure to make it harder for people to create an acount with them to scam other people. Seems reasonable to me. It only took a week to get mine set up once I had sent in the check. And I just renewed my account for another year using the funds IN my account, (though you can also pay with a credit card, though why in the world would you bother?)

Yes Paypal is free to set up. It is also very "small-time" looking to me. I wouldn't go to Sears and ask if I can pay with my Paypal account. (Yes I know they now offer a credit/debit card. Yippee.) That would just be silly in my opinion. Using Propay for the VERY REASONABLE fee they charge makes my business look more professional TO MY CUSTOMER AND I don't have to pay the minimum monthly/gateway fees that I would if I owned a TRUE merchant account.

Don't get me wrong I do use my Paypal account to make puchases on Ebay and such. ONLY because I HATE having to remember my stupid credit card numbers and such and I don't always have my purse around when I want to make a purchase.

I've already stated my reasons why I use Propay over Paypal in the initial post. As I've said before... It is NOT about the money, it is an inexpensive (ie NOT FREE) merchant account. I will pay a reasonable price to project the image that I want to convey to my customers. And a "free" payment processor like Paypal, just doesn't project the professional image I want my customers to see. FREE isn't always a good choice when you own a business.

Do Not buy ProPay card reader
Www.propay.com - Accept Credit Cards

I bought the much promoted card reader from Propay so I would not have to have a paper record of customer's cc info during arts and crafts events, where I sell my handmade jewelry. It read the card information successfully less than half the time and it is hard to tell that this is happening. A small green light is supposed to flash if the info is read from the card, but in a bright setting the light is not visible. ProPay's customer service person was less than helpful, in fact demeaning and rude. I wasted $115 on this piece of junk!

-reply by Maureen Cunningham