Todd,
Looking for: a solution for accepting credit cards that will a) not cost me a fortune and b) not go through an external website like Paypal Standard.
Nope not using it today, just working on my application with them under the condition that I can get VM working with Zen.
Elavon is selling its merchant services outside of the US at least in Canada (through Costco) and there is potentially quite a bit of interest in a working VM module for Canada.
Paypal Pro and Google checkout don’t work in Canada. The Paypal Pro Canadian release got pushed back again to, now, maybe end of year.. but they said that in Jan 2007 as well so not doing so good. Lets put it this way, on the Pyapal forum dealing with this issue members have more or less been given a carte-blanche to post the alternate Canadian merchant solutions there instead of just PM-ing them to each other.
Canadian merchants don’t have many options. Less even low cost ones. Beanstream that is in the partners list at Zen cart is the one of a few Canadian merchant providers, and yes it does have a working module which is a plus, and my experience with them on the phone was great.
However when I compare the same amount of $ and transactions and the cost of both the Elavon and Beanstream for a modest amount of sales I expect to have at the beginning it’s almost 1:2 ratio in price. As your sales grow this gap shrinks somewhat but it’s still a gap.
Of all the ones I found Elavon seems to be the best cost wise. The rate is a tad lower then the Paypal Standard. The only significant outlay is the 200$ for VM. The contract is 2 yrs and the cancelation fee is not too bad at 125$, so it won’t kill you if you have to cancel.
So yes I would like to use it. And unless someone in Canada found a better solution that works with one of the built in gateways (in which case I would be very happy to hear about it), it seems like a potentially good Canadian solution.
As for the currency exchange for now the Canadian merchant account works in CAD. The DCC, is by what I’m told at the moment not available in Canada. Not sure if it can work natively in a dual CAD/US $ mode, still looking into that.
Hopefully that answers some of the question you have.
Thanks
nev