markw10

I work for an E-Commerce company and we currently take credit cards for payment through Wells Fargo and use Authorize.net as our gateway. We also take both Paypal and Google Checkout and at some point want to accept Amazon's new payment system.
Paypal has been calling us and wants to talk to us about using their system to also take credit cards. I just would like to know if this is a good option. I did some research and from what I see online their rate is the same as for regular paypal payments, 2.9% + 30 cents per transaction. We are always looking for ways to save money but also it's important that we have a good system that is reliable and safe and also that we have a good system for when chargebacks/disputes happen. One thing I like with Paypal's system is there's a flat fee where with a regular merchant account the fees get so confusing that it's hard to figure out. Plus, we pay a $15/month gateway fee. We are a fast growing company and I think as we get larger a lot of these monthly fees plus authorize.net gateway fees will become less of an issue. I realize there the discount rate is the base rate and there are interchange and other fees added on top for special cashback and rewards cards, etc.
We accept Visa, Mastercard, Discover Card, and American Express. I know we are charged a 22 cent per transaction fee for our American Express cards so that is paid through Wells Fargo but the discount rate of 3.15% I believe is paid through American Express and taken out of the total payment we get when someone uses American Express. Plus there is a $7.95 monthly fee for accepting American Express. If we take the amount on our most recent bill with no chargebacks that we processed minus American Express (it only has the .22 transaction fee on our Wells Fargo bill for each AmEx transaction) our fees come out to approximately 3.68% if we take the total processed minus AmEx to see what percentage our fees are charged in the month. This seems kind of high and I think part is the $31 monthly internet fee and the $25 monthly fee and this is not including the $15/monthly Authorize.net. For reasons like this it appears Paypal could be quite a bit cheaper and definitely simpler but again as we grow in size I know these monthly fees are less of an issue. Also, currently about 60% of our transactions are credit card. 38% or so are Paypal where we get the lower rates and approximately 2% are Google Checkout which has the same rates as Paypal.

We looked at our merchant account information. We saw the following fees:
Our discount rate for credit cards is listed as 2.10% and non-pin debit as also 2.10%.
We were being charged a $10/month fee for paper statements but just had that removed so we can get statements online. This 10$/month fee was in the earlier math I did above to get the 3.68% rate.
Chargebacks are $25 each and we only have 2-3 per year.
We also have a monthly minimum processing fee of $25 per month I called Wells Fargo and I don’t know if they gave me the correct information. They explained this is charged monthly but anything under that we are charged less. I don’t quite know what this means. If anyone knows more about a monthly minimum processing fee let me know.
We also have a $31 fee for our internet processing that is monthly.
There is a $45 annual fee.
Or authorization fee is .20 per transaction
The AVS is .01 per attempt.

I would only want to switch to Paypal if it's cheaper since I'm very happy with our current system with Wells Fargo and Authorize.net. We use Wells Fargo for our banking and other needs and there's a big advantage of staying with Wells Fargo. The last two years they have tried to raise our rates. Just now we got a notice about them going up to 2.4% for Credit and 2.15% for Non-Pin Debit. Last year we called them though and told them we had other merchant banks offering us lower rates and they lowered them back to 2.1%. We just received this 2nd notice so will make the same call soon. We really prefer to stay with our current system and even if Paypal was slightly cheaper we'd still stay but we want to also get opinions of using Paypal for credit card processing and if it’s significantly cheaper we’d consider it.

I have the following questions/concerns:

-When someone pays using a credit card through their system do they at any point have to leave the website or do they see anything that tells them that it's a paypal credit card system?

-Would I be able to get rid of Authorize.net?

-For anyone who has used them or heard about then, are they a good system to work with? Are they reliable for example?

-How about disputes? We have few chargebacks and I assume if there is one it is like a standard chargeback or maybe even a paypal dispute. Is there a charge for chargebacks like with a regular merchant bank and how well do chargebacks go when you have one?

-Would we still be able to accept all 4 major cards-Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express?

-If we can take American Express is that handled separately such as how we have to do it now with a regular merchant bank? Will we have to pay the $7.50 monthly fee, etc?

I have an E-Commerce website and have never run banner ads before but currently have a very well known graphic design company designing a banner for us. They work with freelance designers globally. Currently we have had drafts created by 3 different designers. Here is the issue:

All 3 of these have product images or logos. For example since we sell Consumer Electronics some have the Xbox 360, Sony PS3, Nintendo Wii, and other similar logos. Others have the product images for products such as the iPhone 4, iPad, and other similar items. I immediately thought that this was a copyright issue but yet with all 3 submitted drafts having this I have to wonder if that's the case. Not all of these designers are in the US though. I'm located in the US but know that laws may vary in other countries.

In the past we had our logo designed by this same company but I understand a logo may not be the same since it's representing us and also is trademarked by us. An ad is simply a banner ad that is just an ad for products we sell or sell accessories for and it's not trademarked by us. I just don't want to run into any copyright issues down the line. Does anyone have any knowledge of this or know where I can go online to get legal information on this? Even if I'm allowed to place these logos or images in our ads I am wondering if we have to have small print at the bottom of the banner stating that for example "Apple iPhone is a trademark of Apple, Inc". It just would take away from the ad and I don't think I've seen this before.

Thank you for your advice.