International E-Commerce Payment Systems

"I recently had a website developed for my tiny business and am trying to find a payment gateway ASAP. PayPal would be perfect, but they tell me they don't extend their services to South Africa. I need something similar to a PayPal account. I could then just send customers an invoice and ask them to pay direct into the account. Do you know of any other reputable company that has the same facilities?" -- Lorna Oosthuizen, Balela Buttons

At present no service has emerged with anything comparable to the wide acceptance of PayPal. Unfortunately, they don't serve Africa at present. For merchants based in South Africa your primary choices are:

WorldPay (www.worldpay.com) is a UK-based company that allows you to sell in any of 120 currencies and receive remittance in the South African Rand, US dollars, Euros, British Pounds, and 10 other currencies. Their WorldDirect service charges a set-up fee and annual fee, plus a transaction rate of 4.5% of each sale, and a remittance charge to transfer money to your own bank. Remittances are held for about four weeks before being deposited in your bank. Also look at rates offered by PlanetPayment (www.planetpayment.com), a US company that specializes in merchant services for international companies.

CCNow (www.ccnow.com) is a US company that allows international merchants to sell tangible goods (not digital products) in US dollars only. Costs for US merchants are US $9.95/month plus 9% on monthly revenue over US $100. International merchants pay US $11.95/month plus 11% on monthly sales over US $100. Payments are made twice monthly, but some money (especially for new merchants) is kept in a reserve fund. CCNow includes a simple shopping cart as part of their service.

While the companies above can serve merchants in many countries, the following ones are limited at present to South African merchants. The iVeri payment gateway (www.iveri.com/) is available in South Africa through Nedbank (www.nedbank.co.za). Standard Bank of South Africa, Ltd. has developed AutoPay, a system whereby South African shoppers can transfer money from their bank accounts to a merchant in payment for goods or services. (http://www.standardbank.co.za/site/online_AutoPay/apForMerchants.html)