If you’re just starting out, then PayPal or Stripe will have no up front costs, but their per-transaction fees will be higher (around 3 or 3.5% + $0.30 -ish).

After you reach a threshold of monthly transactions then it makes more sense to select a merchant services provider that might have an annual fee but their per-transaction fee is often 1% or less. That would mean you’re saving 67% in processing fees or more, minus a nominal annual fee, compared to PayPal or Stripe.

Do not make a quick decision on any service that requires a term commitment (that’s good advice on any service, not just merchant services).

If you buy merchant services from a reseller, then often you will not pay more and the reseller will often act as a contact for support, and they will be invested in your continuing use of their program.

There may be industry-specific considerations regarding fees and hardware, but don’t let an industry-specific provider convince you that they are the only option just because they are industry-specific.

PCI stands for Payment Card Industry. The major credit card brands established the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council to create guidelines for websites that process credit card data. This set of guidelines is called the PCI Data Security Standard or PCI DSS.

PCI compliance might be part of state law in some US States (Nevada, Minnesota, and Washington), but the federal government does not regulate PCI. Yet, contracting to accept any major credit card (Visa, MasterCard, JCB, American Express or Discover) means you are agreeing to PCI DSS. So most major credit card processors and merchant service providers will be PCI compliant as an industry standard, but just using one of these does not necessarily make your entire website or business PCI compliant.

Yes, all the services listed above are PCI compliant. Mirex Marketing does not guarantee their compliance but they will each attest to their compliance.

Probably, but not necessarily. Usually card holder data (CHD) is processed by the credit card processor and merchant services provider that is integrated with your website. They process, store and encrypt the data and it’s not even accessable to you as the merchant (ie you can’t manually access the data to copy and use someone else’s credit card information, even if the system allows you to charge the card again for other products or services, or gives the customer the option to store the card information for later purchases).

Your website may collect personal data including the name, email, or phone number of people who fill out your contact forms. Your website will store cookies which is essentially behavior data of individuals who visit your website and that data is often used for advertising or ad retargeting. This is technically not Card Holder Data (CHD), but it can be especially difficult to determine PCI compliance if your website has any java script.

For most small businesses, PCI compliance is self-declared. If you are concerned about whether your site is actually PCI compliant then a security partner like SecurityMetrics or other Approved Scanning Vendor (ASV) is required.