Hi,

I am looking for suggestions/recommendations of the best bank to use for a business that I am setting up. Currently our thinking is Abbey National as they have (mostly) free banking.

We will be running an online retail site, and plan to do off-line card transactions - so really this is the area we are most concerned about. Can you suggest the cheapest/most cost effective way of doing this? We intend to offer PayPal as one option, but feel that we should offer regular credit/debit card processing too.

We expect low volumes of orders, to start with at least, so cannot commit to a set volume of transactions per month.

All suggestions gratefully received.

Hi nj8,

Abbey do seem to have a sweet deal at the moment, but not sure if they offer credit card merchant account. Paypal is OK, and apparently purchasers don\'t have to signup to them any more. If your target audience is UK only then why not consider nochex.com - I believe the rates are better and they offer unrivaled protection to merchants with NO clawbacks but the drawback is that they only work with UK issued credit cards.

AFAIK, to have a full merchant account for any online business requires either a good trading history or a great bank manager. The only advice I can give is to try and do as much in person as possible and to have a great business plan.

Lyndon

Paypals a good option as they do not charge a monthly fee and only charge per transaction. I think their transaction charge may be a bit higher but you do not have any monthly charges.

You do not have to be a member of paypal and can use a debit / credit card to pay if you are not a member and its easy to put on your site.

also you could take a look at 2checkout.com

We were offered cc facilities by our bank when we opened the account, but found that by shopping around and visiting branch managers with our business plan we got a better response than when we rang around.

Get out there and show them that you meen business :whistle: