First a quick thanks to all that support this forum as it helped me enormously building our first online store! (donations are following soon)
We are a new company based in Bogota, Colombia, starting our first web shop and are looking for a card processor. I have searched all over the forum but am not finding the information/recommendations that should be useful for many others that are or will be in this similar situation.
Some facts about us:
1. we can not (do not want to) incorporate in US or UK
2. we can not open a bank account in US or UK (money laundering/accounting regulations would prohibit this in my opinion)
3. we are a new shop and estimate to sell somewhere between 0 and 1000USD a month for the first months
4. we have no processing history
5. can charge in USD
6. average ticket size: 125USD
I have investigated so far: (and correct me if I am wrong):
1. 2checkout.com, has a strange requirement of being mentioned as our reseller (which I find really confusing for our customers) and seems to has some serious complaints issued from users about withholding funds etc, but is relatively easy to arrange
2. paypal, easy/fast, but sides with the customer and does not help the retailer too much against charge backs (besides that their service is not available in Colombia)
3. moneybookers, high costs of money transfers (especially to Latin America?), problems with validation of account
4. merchant account through resellers: as a non-US company this is hard to get. We are rated as high risk and get higher rates (which I can understand) but even then it is hard to get a serious reseller to accept you. I have tried almost all resellers in the list at authorize.net and most do not reply, waiting on some others
5. direct merchant account with local banks...not tried this yet, anyone has experience with this in Latin America??
6. some local Colombian options, but I prefer an international one which should give more confidence to our international customers
So, please who has been in this same situation and found a good company to work with, or who can just recommend a great company or a good solution to start off our business??
All help is very appreciated!!!



