Hi,

I'm preparing to setup an ecommerce site for my wine store (in NYC) that will open in February, 2007.  From what I've read so far, Ultima offers a great hosting environment, especially given my background in ASP.NET 2.0 and C#.  My question is, is there anyone that can recommend an online payment processing company that can be used to process all major credit cards, including Amex and Debit Cards?  I reviewed few recommendations from www.asp.net forum, but I thought I'd get more opinions from here.

Thanks in advance.

- Jin 

My Merchant account is through MerchantPlus (backed by JP Chase Morgan Bank) and I use Authorize.Net for payment processing.  Authorize.Net is quite popular, reasonably priced, and most shopping cart software is pre-configured to work with them so there is usually no coding needed.  If you are building your own cart, they offer API documentation and code samples that are easy to implement.

One thing to note with MerchantPlus/JP Chase Morgan....your initial contract with them is for 3 years (they bury it in the fine print on the credit application page which they know that nobody actually reads) and there is NO way to break it.

Thank you very much for your input.  I will look into both Authorize.net and MerchantPlus.  I believe that Citibank also offers something similar, so I'll compare the options.

You're quite welcome.

MerchantPlus is basically a "reseller".  In the end, your contract is through JP Chase Morgan Bank, which competes with Citibank, but as a reseller MerchantPlus is able to offer other services, and sometimes lower rates.

Or, you could just sign-up with PayPal and let them do all of your processing, although I have not seen their merchant rates/fees.

Hi Jin,

    I'd look seriously at PayPal.  The most flexible solution, IMHO, is Website Payments Pro (https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_wp-pro-overview-outside), which gives you the ability to accept credit cards directly on your site or to have users pay with their PayPal accounts.  Funny thing about PayPal is this: some users love it and want to pay no other way.  Some users hate it and want to pay any other way.  :-P  What can ya do?  You can't please everyone!  Getting set up is pretty quick and easy and the costs are pretty darn good .. $20/month, $.30/transaction + 2.2% to 2.9%, depending on your volume.  And, of course, Commerce Starter Kit is integrated with PayPal Payments Pro!

   And make sure you let me know ... I'm a wine lover, personally, and would love to support our Ultima customers! 

Thanks JSawyer.  I'll look into paypal as well.  Once my wine store is open, maybe you can stop by when you're in NYC for a visit (Tribeca area).  We are planning plenty of wine tasting sessions.

 
- Jin