Anyone that has done substantial volume in the IM world has a horror story working with Paypal and several other ewallet solutions. Frozen funds; slow paying; etc..... The best long term strategy is to have several of your own merchant accounts with different banks/processors. You get paid the next day; they are much more flexible to work with and they don't have a draconian approach to issues. Unfortunately, they are harder for most IM's to get because the bank/processor underwriting is stricter. The other advantage, if you can get multiple merchant accounts, is that they typically have multiple options in regards to software that is already integrated and provides significant value. We typically work with a virtual terminal software that provides some back end functionality: authorize.net; yourpay, etc...
The last advantage is that unlike with paypal and other ewallet solutions, it is much easier to make changes to a merchant account in regards to types of products, dba's and business names. We have had a number of our merchant accounts for several years and we have been able to sell several programs under them without getting a brand new account for each product. We have even helped out other IM's that we work with that need additional payment capacity because their ewallet has terminated them or is holding money.....We change the descriptor and the dba with the bank and let them know what we are doing and we are in business.
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