Web Hosting

This basically breaks down into 3 different categories as follows :-

1) Merchant account
This is a financial contract that you will need with a merchant acquiring bank and which provides you with the facility to accept credit and debit card payments. Don’t worry if you have never accepted cards before or if you only have a merchant number for telephone payments and use a manual terminal, as we can liaise with your bank to organise the necessary merchant number required for Internet payments. We do all this for no extra charge.

For a new merchant account you would expect to pay setup fees anywhere between £75 - £250 + VAT depending on the bank. Then there would be a merchant service charge between 1.6% - 2.8% levied on any credit card transactions depending on many factors such as the anticipated volumes, the number of years you have been trading, average transaction amount etc. On debit cards the bank would normally charge a fixed price per transaction ranging from 20p – 50p on average.

Preferential rates for SecureHosting customers

We have arranged preferential merchant account terms for SecureHosting customers through one of the UK's top acquiring banks. Our rates beat most merchant account fees, whether you are a startup or a well-established business. Please see table of rates below :-

i. for a business that is a startup, or has never accepted cards before :-

ii. for an established business already accepting cards and looking to switch from their existing merchant account provider :-

Please contact us on 0845 474 9035 option 1 to discuss our preferential merchant account rates, or simply apply now!

We can help most businesses to obtain a merchant account, including startups. The only categories of business that we cannot usually help are listed at the foot of this page.

2) Payment gateway (otherwise known as payment service provider - PSP)
This is the part that we offer. A payment gateway connects your main web site to your merchant acquiring bank over the Internet. Normally a payment gateway will provide an area on a secure server to host your payment forms, and will forward the transaction payment data in real-time to your merchant acquiring bank for authorisation. If your bank authorises the transaction the payment gateway will return a confirmation page back to your customer and send you notification of the successful order.

You need a payment gateway in addition to your merchant account, as the merchant account itself is useless without one! Some banks confuse the issue by offering their own payment gateways as an optional extra with their merchant accounts - beware however as the banks will charge you a hefty premium for this, typically an extra 2% on each card transaction! You are under no obligation to use the bank's payment gateway, and you will save a great deal of money by using an independent one such as our UPG payment gateway service.

The costs for our service can be found below.

Our charging structure is unique within our industry, as our transaction fees are based on a pre-pay credits system. The advantage of this is that you only pay for what you need, so you can start small and buy progressively larger blocks of credits as your transaction numbers increase. The larger the block, the cheaper the cost per transaction. High volume merchants benefit from a cost per transaction lower than any other payment service provider.

There are 3 elements to our pricing – setup fees, an annual fee and a per transaction fee. The setup fee of £60 shown below is payable in two instalments; the first £25 payable with your initial UPG application, and then the remaining £35 payable once you convert your free trial eCOM account into a live account.

Please note that you will have to pay your merchant acquiring bank for the actual merchant account. The merchant account rates will be quoted by your bank.

The purchased transaction credits can be used at any time - there is no time limit in which they have to be used, however please note that if you cancel your SecureHosting account that we cannot refund any unused transactions.

3) Shopping cart / order forms
Your web site will need to have a system to allow your customers to select items from your web site and proceed to the secure payment gateway to "check out". If you have a large number of items for sale you will probably need a shopping cart system to allow your customers to browse your items and add to a basket as they navigate around your online catalogue. Our service integrates seamlessly with all popular third party shopping carts, however if your requirements are very bespoke you can employ the services a web developer to build a custom cart system for you.

If you only have a small number of items for sale you can create a simple order form, or use the "Buy Buttons" feature included in our eCOM Standard service to quickly add shopping functionality to your site.

We hope the above helps to clarify the situation a little more. We speak to confused merchants every day and are only too pleased to speak to you if you have any questions regarding the whole process. Please call us on 0845 474 9035, or place a question through our contact page.