Hi Edwin,
edwinlloyd:
I'm just going through this thought process now. HSBC is telling me that if I go with Protx (or Nochex etc) I will have to pay Protx their fee, AND pay HSBC a fee for Protx putting the proceeds into the merchant account. Is that your understanding?
Protx is a payment gateway. Their services must be used in conjunction with a Merchant Account. So you have to pay the merchant account fees and then the payment gateway's fees as well.
This is a fairly standard arrangement and for a decent-sized shop represent the most cost effective and professional method to take card payments.
Your merchant account will charge a set monthly rate plus a percentage for each Credit Card transaction and a set amount for each Debit Card transaction.
Protx will charge a monthly rate for quite a large number of transactions and only above this amount will you have to pay additional transaction fees (you're doing very well if you reach that stage! :) ).
We have found (the hard way) that if you haggle, you can get a much better rate and smaller monthly "minimum charge" from your merchant account provider so don't be afraid to bully them somewhat, saying you have been offered "£10 a month minimum charge" elsewhere... I wish we had done that as we could be spending much less monthly but are committed for a year now to £25 a month of minimum charges (which we can't hope to cover with transaction charges at the minute :( ).
Protx's fees are set but reasonable so I'm afraid haggling won't work with them! :)
I hope that information is useful to you.
If you do decide to go with Protx in the end please consider using the following link to sign up with them as you will then get a discount off our Protx module for Zen Cart (which lets you integrate your shop perfectly with Protx so customers are kept on your site when they checkout, just like amazon/dabs etc.)...
Sign Up with Protx and get discount off Zen Cart Protx Payment Module
(We get a small commission for you signing up so are happy to pass the savings on to you! :) ).
I'm not sure that there is a working HSBC integration module at the minute but Protx's systems integrate with HSBC merchant accounts and we have several people using our module with HSBC merchant accounts very successfully indeed!
NOTE: We are sorry that Conor is no longer with us.
We are grateful for all his contributions to the Zen Cart community.