What is a low-cost way for an independent contractor to quickly collect payments online?
Payments
Asked by Question Bot12/Dec/20121 answer
1 Answer
F
Faisal Khan
Answered 12/Dec/2012
To answer your question in reverse:
Square would be US concentric and you would need the physical swipe of the card.
If you are okay with 5.0% deduction (+/- 1.0%) you might want to check out www.2checkout.com - they are international and will accept cards online. You can invoice your clients using Freshbooks (see www.Freshbooks.com) and FreshBooks integrates with services like PayPal, Google Checkout and 2Checkout, so your clients can receive the invoice and be able to pay online as well (See: http://community.freshbooks.com/...). The reason 2Checkout charges a very high-premium on transactions, is because they take a lot of risk (especially for international clients).
If you are US based, you can have your US clients send you payments via eCheck. Look up any decent ACH provider and the transaction cost will be very low (typically between $0.30 to $0.80 per transaction, irrespective of the value of the check).
PayPal is the most preferred method to get paid. In the event that does not work with you, you can try the many 1000s of payment processors who will process payments via credit card online for you.
If your processing amounts are large,ACH would be the correct approach, and if a sizable amount of your transactions come from overseas, then SWIFT is one of the most preferred method (yes, the fees are relatively high, but that is the cost of doing business).
Although you understand your clients best, passing the cost of receiving the transaction to the client is not a very noble approach. A merchant (in this case you), are liable to absorb that cost. It is the cost of doing business and receiving money for you.
PayPal/Google-checkout + ACh are the two most preferred method's I would recommend, and for those markets beyond PayPal's/Google's geographical outbound payments area, you can think of adding 2Checkout.com for international payments via credit cards.
Other alternatives you might want to research (geographic coverage, traction, acceptance, etc.) are companies like Facecash, Venmo, Dwolla, BillMeLater, etc.
Square would be US concentric and you would need the physical swipe of the card.
If you are okay with 5.0% deduction (+/- 1.0%) you might want to check out www.2checkout.com - they are international and will accept cards online. You can invoice your clients using Freshbooks (see www.Freshbooks.com) and FreshBooks integrates with services like PayPal, Google Checkout and 2Checkout, so your clients can receive the invoice and be able to pay online as well (See: http://community.freshbooks.com/...). The reason 2Checkout charges a very high-premium on transactions, is because they take a lot of risk (especially for international clients).
If you are US based, you can have your US clients send you payments via eCheck. Look up any decent ACH provider and the transaction cost will be very low (typically between $0.30 to $0.80 per transaction, irrespective of the value of the check).
PayPal is the most preferred method to get paid. In the event that does not work with you, you can try the many 1000s of payment processors who will process payments via credit card online for you.
If your processing amounts are large,ACH would be the correct approach, and if a sizable amount of your transactions come from overseas, then SWIFT is one of the most preferred method (yes, the fees are relatively high, but that is the cost of doing business).
Although you understand your clients best, passing the cost of receiving the transaction to the client is not a very noble approach. A merchant (in this case you), are liable to absorb that cost. It is the cost of doing business and receiving money for you.
PayPal/Google-checkout + ACh are the two most preferred method's I would recommend, and for those markets beyond PayPal's/Google's geographical outbound payments area, you can think of adding 2Checkout.com for international payments via credit cards.
Other alternatives you might want to research (geographic coverage, traction, acceptance, etc.) are companies like Facecash, Venmo, Dwolla, BillMeLater, etc.