what is the best way to accept online payment?

There are many ways to accept payments online. The most common way is Credit Cards and PayPal in the US. But I'm not sure about both in the region.

If you want to support PayPal and Credit Cards, I would suggest that you use PayPal Payments Pro, but your company must be based in the US. So I don't think it's an option.

The other option would be to use Authorize.net. It's a very powerful payments gateway with the lowest commission rates online. The down side of this payment gateway is that it does not support PayPal and you'll have to re-implement most of the code to support PayPal as well.

If your startup is targeting the MENA region, I would recommend to create a Mobile Payment solution. You can buy a number and get paid when someone sends you an SMS:

• User requests to Pay.
• You ask the user to send you a generated code via SMS.

The downside of this solution is that the Mobile Providers get a very high commission on those SMSes (up to 50%), but I'm sure that the conversion rate in the MENA using this payment method will be higher.

An other way is to create Pre Paid cards and sell them in stores. This does not seem very simple and I'm not really familiar with the model.

The last way to accept payments is via Checks and Wire Transfers. I wouldn't recommend this way because it's not very scalable, especially if you are targeting the consumer market and have low prices.

I'd personally go for Authorize.net and accept Credit Cards from all the world (Make sure you get yourself a good developer to handle this task). If you are trying to create an online store, make sure you take a look at Magento eCommerce Platform (http://www.magentocommerce.com/) which has modules to accept payments via different Payment Gateways.

Online payments are a major problem in MENA, people use:

• Credit cards - very little of the time
• CashU by maktoob
• OneCard in Saudi
• Cash on delivery (if you are buying a product that will be shipped)

Method 2,3,4 requires that the merchant does some work on his end to accept them.

I do a lot of Freelancing jobs and the killing part is the payment, specially that PayPal is not available in most of the Arab Countries, including Jordan my home country!

I recently registered with 2checkout, they accept all credit cards + paypal payments. it also can be integrated into different carts and has its own API if you want to do your own cart! What is cool about it as well, I can easily invoice my clients once agreed, where they receive a checkout link where they can pay through credit cards/paypal. One last coool feature is, recurring payments, you can set an invoice as recurring and it will automatically be sent to the client every x period of time.

When it comes to payouts, they have different options:

1- Payoneer card: which is a prepaid mastercard that you request from a 3rd party and in one button you can transfer the whole balance from your 2checkout account to the card and use it for POS purchases, online or ATM withdrawals.

2- Checks, they can send you checks after reaching certain level of balance.

3- they can deposit the amount directly to your bank account in specific countries only.

On the other hand, I think the commission they take is a bit high, but this is the only available option for me!

btw, its subscription fees is less than $50 and paid once!

check it out!

the links included in this answer are affiliate links, where if you registered using them I will make a small amount of money.

I was going to set up an online shop of products for my blog, but when I faced the issue of online payment I completely backed out!

1- PayPal doesn't work in most countries in the ME. 2- Credits Cards systems are not very reliable (althought I often shop online amazon etc. with my credit card and never faced any problem, but people in the region are still not used to the idea)

However I went through the hassle of listing all the possible ways I could do that, so I'm gonna share them with you maybe it will spare you some time-wasting :D

google checkout (at least it works in ME) paypal express checkout paypal payments pro paypal payments standard

eventually decided to go for this: http://www.addmerch.com/ but in your case not sure how much it would help... :) anyway good luck!

I was checking out NETELLER

I have a pdf from them if you are interested

I uploaded it under http://migh.info/docs/Standard%20Fee%20Schedule.pdf

Hope this is helpful :)

Another friend told me that he managed to do this via a bank in lebanon, but he "forgot" the name of the bank. So maybe if you get a list of the banks and start calling them, you might get a positive answer somewhere.

There is not a single right solution to the online payment problem in the Arab world but using a combination of the other methods mentioned here and registering with a local bank to accept credit cards using there payment gateway solves most of the problems.

I am based in Saudi Arabia and i have used the bank payment gateway solution myself for a few clients.

This is the biggest reason that ecommerce is so limited in the region. Banks are unwilling and unmotivated to provide gateways. When they do, they charge high fees and take considerable money as collatoral. To have a proper payment gateway that is highly secure, trusted and well-integrated into your site the only option is to incorporate your business in Europe or North America. This way you can use Authorize, Web Payments Pro, CyberSource, WorldPay or others. PayPal is not a solution for a proper business in the region. It is very limited here.

At www.GoNabit.com we have literally scoured the globe looking for the right solution for payment gateways. The solutions lie outside the region. Otherwise, you are putting $85,000 on account with Emirates Bank to have a poor linked-out gateway.

People don't buy online in this region for two reasons: 1. there is nothing to buy online 2. the gateways here are not confidence-inspiring

I wrote on my blog about this too if you want more info.

Have people considered something like moneybookers or alertpay - they are available in many more countries to enable more people to accept online payments.

Payments by bank transfers is much time consuming. The best way till now I have experienced is hcm pay pal for me. But the changes in the government policy may affect such modes even if it is pay pal or alert pay or money bookers. Receiving bearer cheques is also a risky way to accept the money. Most of the times such cheques are misplaced in the transit itself and the sending party do not take any responsibility regarding the non receipt of the cheque. I am also in search of new ways of accepting payment online and will like to know more updates here.

My 2 cents: One of the solutions can be offering 2 payment ways, A) the usual online, B) making a deal with an exchange office or western union type of business, to accept payments on your behalf from customers who physically pay at location. It's interesting 1) these offices are almost everywhere, 2) customer confidence (?), 3) Might set people off, might be suitable for some products and not all products, etc. No idea yet about the commission though.