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Nov 10
2009
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Feepay are an Irish company that provide an online payment collection service. This service has been growing in popularity over the past few months particularly with schools, clubs and SMEs. The Feepay service addresses two of the main barriers to entry facing those who want to accept online payments in Ireland:
- Monthly Fees and Minimum Monthly Charges
- Internet Merchant Accounts
Start-up companies and SMEs tend to be reluctant to commit to a 12 month contract. This is one of the reasons for the popularity of PayPal in Ireland, Merchants are only charged when they process a payment so there are no monthly commitments and less exposure should the venture not go as well as planned. This 'pay-as-you-go' approach also appeals to schools and clubs who tend to process payments annually.
Feepay addresses these issues through a partnership agreement with an acquiring bank and acting as a middle man between the Merchant and a Payments Service Provider, in this case - Realex Payments. Feepay hold an account with Realex so the Merchant need not become a Realex client. In fact the Merchant will not have any interaction with Realex and as such, only pay Feepay when a transaction is processed.
What are the Costs?
Feepay's acquiring bank partnership means Feepay clients get preferential rates with their Merchant account. The rates are as follows:
- 1.5% for credit card transactions
- 17 cent per debit card transaction
Feepay charge €1.25 per transaction so when combined with the merchant account fees they are quite competitive compared to PayPal.
A laser card payment of €100 with Feepay will cost you €1.42 and a credit card payment of €100 will cost you €2.75. Processing the same as a credit card payment with PayPal will cost you €3.80, a saving of €1.05 - and that is more than one percent of the transaction value.
Feepay charge a setup fee of €250 (which includes the first 100 transactions) but we have negotiated a 10% discount (€25) for readers of this blog. To avail of this 10% discount just mention webpayments.ie when signing up with Feepay.
How does it work?
Feepay provide four methods for accepting online payments.
1. Use Feepay as a shopping cart
The merchants products and the payment page are hosted by Feepay. Customers will visit the Feepay website, select the item they want, register on Feepay and complete the payment process.
2. Use Feepay to process the payment
The shopping cart functionality is handled by the Merchant but at the point of payment the customer is redirected to the Feepay for payment process.
3. Use Feepay to generate and send invoices via email
Invoices can be generated and emailed using the Feepay system. The recipient will receive a link to their invoice in the email which will allow them to make payment on the Feepay site using a Laser or credit card.
4. Accept payments via Moodle
Moodle is an GPL Licensed web application that educators use to create online learning sites. Feepay allows course providers to accept Laser and credit card payments via a Moodle plugin.
What do we think?
On the 'Why Feepay?' page, Feepay present a good argument for why you should choose them. Here are the 3 reasons they give:
- It's Easy
- It's Cost Effective
- It's More Efficient
From the perspective of their target market i.e. SME's, schools, clubs, education providers and church payments Feepay do indeed live up to these claims. Feepay is easy to setup, the simplest form of integration only requires the Merchant to add a link to their website. The simplified integration process does indeed make things very easy for the Merchant but the result of this is the checkout process for the customer is more complicated. There is a trade-off made between ease of integration and usability for the customer.
Feepay are cost effective if you process a low volume of transactions which, again is going to be the case with Feepay's target market. Once the Merchant begins to process a significant volume of transactions then they will then be in a position to evolve their payments platform and form their own direct relationship with a Payment Service Provider.
Finally the Feepay Merchant account agreement means that the settlement period is considerably shorter compared to Payment Bureaus (the only other people providing a pay-as-you-go payments service.)
Dave
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