NON-US merchant accounts?

WEBDOMAIN.com

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After auditing the European offers (for France and Austria), I found several providers (AtosOrigin for France and Mpay24 for Austria). Anyway, these providers cost more than any US third party providers (average of 10% per transaction + €0.5).

I was wondering:
  • Would it be better to open an US bank account to be able to get a US merchant account? If yes, how? Who should we contact? Is this legal?
  • Would it be better to continue with third party payment gateways and wait the opportunity, in a near future, to switch to a better EU offer (as soon as it will be available) ?
  • Is there any other EU alternatives I am not aware of?

This question is, I guess, a redundant question to all NON-US businesses. Some countries may offer interresting alternatives to their customers but here, in EU, it seems there is still a lack of offers.
Maybe I wasn't able to find the good providers and some members here already found the beauty pearl.

Please share your lucky finds. :D
 
obviously your own business is hosting...

but why do you want to open a US merchant account... what benefits will it get you?
I don't see in your post what you have been auditing, or buying etc...
 
Actually, only US propose reliable/cheap merchant accounts to process credit cards.
Until now, we were using 2CO and paypal as our credit cards processors. Unfortunatly, these are third party processors and their rates are much higher than any direct merchant accounts around. (They are still cheaper than the EU merchant accounts that i found).
Anyway, reliability of these third party processor is also not their strongest feature. Regardind to big players (like authorize.net), they can't garantee any security agaisnt fraud orders or chargebacks (as long as they are third party of these companies).
Even if we always avoided disputes (as long as we are processing all our orders manually), we would like to find a better solution. Which will bring us more reliability and, of course, serenity.
This will also allow us to automatize the order process and, then, dedicate resources to customer support.
At last, we will also able to reduce our prices and be more competitive.
 
if you are a UK business. your best bet is to open a business account at a normal UK Bank,
Most UK banks have the ability to enable you to take credit card transactions for your buisiness. you are right though this is costly...

you might also want to look at a ser5vice like worldpay that let you have credit card payment through their service... though you will find as before this is rather costly.
 
Thank you root.
Unfortunatly, we are not in the UK.
I already had a look at WorldPay but they are also third party processor like 2CO and LinkPoint.
I guess there is a big opportunity for new comers here. Since there is really a lack of good payment processors in EU.
 
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