Payments collections

[hodo]

I'm sure this has been covered here before but was wanting some fresh insight on how to get paid (actual money collection) for games.

Not sure how to get the money. Paypal? that sort of thing for shareware?
What if you have a full for cash only title you will let the customer download after payment?

[Mark Currie]

I’m not actually selling anything at the moment, but I’ve been researching this topic.

I’ve been looking into using paypal as a payment processor. They have some pretty nice advantages. They are cheap (they take only around 3%), you get access to your money quickly, they have great developer tools--in case if you want to do the website programming for the purchase process. Paypal is generic, can be used for any kind of online store.

I think payment processors like plimus and regnow specialize in shareware and therefore they can save you a lot of time and effort. These processors cost more, but have lots of high level features like providing copy protection and supporting affiliate sales. (Paypal’s developer center shows how to do affiliate sales yourself, but I would guess that affiliates would rather you use plimus or regnow).

[Matthew]

www.regshare.com is a useful place for payment processor research. They have handy tables like: http://www.regshare.com/matrix1a.asp

[MattInglot]

Using credit card mechant account (visa, mastercard, discover, amex), PayPal, and snail mail (cheque/money order) for CustomBar (http://www.custombar.net)

Overwhelming majority of people here using payment systems specifically designed for shareware authors. eSellerate, Plimus, RegNow, and others whose names are slipping my mind right now. Advantage is they provide a lot of extra "stuff" and make setting up payment processing very easy. Disadvantage is that you can expect to lose 10-20% off each sale for payment processing. Based on what I've read here this is probably your best bet, combined with PayPal (PayPal has wonderfully cheap rates).

PayPal now offers credit card processing to US merchants. I've not heard much about this but it's definitely worth investigating heavily.

[henning]

I use Plimus and am quite happy with them. Their fees are quite reasonable, too. Check it out:

http://www.plimus.com/jsp/fee_schedule.jsp

henning

[isp]

I'm sorry if this has been asked before, but could not find what I was looking for.

I'm at the point where I need to finding a payment processor and was wondering what other indie developers are using. And if possible a short description of pros and cons.

thanks,

[Greg Squire]

www.regshare.com is a useful place for payment processor research. They have handy tables like: http://www.regshare.com/matrix1a.asp

That's a cool site. Very Interesting. There is also a list on the Indie Wiki site, here (http://www.indiewiki.org/index.php?PaymentProcessors).