2Checkout - Overview as a Payment Processor

Actually, to just use the words 'Payment Processor' and '2Checkout' in the same sentence is liable to get you into trouble.

2Checkout is very sensitive about who they are and what type of service they provide. They do not see themselves as a 'Payment Processor'. They are an 'Authorized reseller/retailer' of your products and services. So in essence, you sell your products to them and they sell it, for a 5.5% commission fee, on to someone else. The fact that the 'someone else' was someone who landed up on YOUR site and wanted to buy YOUR product is beside the point!

So what services DOES 2Checkout provide, as an 'Authorized Retailer'? Strangely enough, most the same services provided by a company that provides 'Payment Processor' services....

If you sell your products or service through 2Checkout (or rather then, 'to' 2Checkout), you can expect to do it in the following ways:

You can sell services
You can sell services such as advertising, hosting, copywriting and lots others. But be aware - check their policies on what is not allowed. For example, although normal hosting services are allowed, IRC Chat Hosting and Game Server Hosting are not.

You can sell products
These can be tangible or electronic. Once again, make sure that you do read their policies on what type of products are not allowed.

It might be a good point to mention at this stage that when you do sign up with them, your website and products already need to be set up so that they can review it for compliance with their policies before your account will be opened with them.

Memberships and recurring billing
You can also sell membership services which almost always implies some type of recurring billing service. 2Checkout offers a free script (provided by a third party) to set up your membership site or it can integrate with any type of membership site that you have.

2Checkout operates in a large number of countries and also offers the following currencies:
- US Dollars
- Australian Dollars
- Canadian Dollars
- Danish Kroner
- Euro
- GBP-Sterlings
- Hong Kong Dollars
- Japanese Yen
- New Zealand Dollars
- Norwegian Kroner
- Swedish Kroner
- Swiss Francs
One other thing to note is that 2Checkout is very sensitive about the text and logos that you place on your site. You have to get the wording exactly right the way that they want it, and you cannot just display any credit card logos on your site - they do have approved versions of the credit card logos that you should download from their site and use.

Like all big service providers that have millions of clients, not everyone is going to be satisfied with their service. They are very fraud sensitive and therefore may freeze your account or put you under investigation if they suspect any fraudulent activity.

Despite this, 2Checkout is really a very popular provider and has a good reputation in the industry, and since it offers services in multiple countries, it does offer a viable alternative for those countries not able to easily sell through Paypal.

Finally, the question that can be asked is: Do you need your own shopping cart? The answer is no, 2Checkout does provide its own shopping cart. But always remember, it is disconcerting for a customer to start doing shopping on one site, and then move to another site as soon as the 'Add to cart' button is pressed. He might just not return to your site.

Wouldn't you rather use a shopping cart that integrates seamlessly with 2Checkout but where the customer remains on your site all the time? In this way the customer will not have to leave your site and you will not have a potential 'lack of trust' problem which might lead to shopping cart abandonment.

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