When we clarified that we required online payments, he chuckled and said 'oh, no way we do that, it is far too dangerous'.
He then proposed a compromise solution where we collect credit card numbers and then punch them manually into the terminal to process payments.
We ended up incorporating in the USA.
I ask because merchant accounts denominated in AUD are widely available, but for USD it still appears that only the NAB have multi-currency support.
To your question though.. no I cant bill directly in USD. I am very new (and ignorant) to receiving online payments, so I'm really curious what the issues for Americans are. The on-line currency converters are accurate to (I would guess) +- 1hour currency fluctuations so would give a very accurate estimate (to within cents) of the cost of a transaction... Wouldn't this be good enough?
Otherwise if this is an issue then paypal should do the job... 2 mins to set up and gives an alternative option.
Would be good to hear your own personal experiences.
It's a marketing disaster, in fact, and would look completely amateurish.
Paypal is never Plan A.
From stories I heard in the past, I was expecting a horrible experience (banks not being able to grok the concept of digital goods etc). Turns out that either the stories were a furphy or banks have gotten a lot better.
Here's the process I went through.
1. Application
2. Set up a single page website to give a brief overview of product
3. Include TOS and returns policy (adapted from wordpress.com)
4. Wait 7 days for approval
Thats it. One week to get a merchant account with no prior business history. The rates are fairly standard:
1.4%/trans, $33 monthly, $44 anual fee, $33 chargeback fee
I think off the top of my head those rates beat those provided by paypal, stripe, etc. although I'm happy to be corrected if anyone has up-to-date info about them
I'll also be paying $300/yr for gateway fees since I have no desire to handle CC details directly.