I tried. I gave up. My processor handles it for like $90 or $100 per year. It all adds up.

BugmanBCE said:

For you guys who take credit cards, what do you do for PCI compliance? Currently I have a company that handles it and last year they started wanting $100/year for it. I paid it but decided to try to find another way when it came up again, and here I am.

Can you get this handled for free?

Click to expand...

Yeah, it's a total ripoff, but I suppose I will just pay it. There might be a way out of paying for it, but it isn't worth my time to spend hours figuring it out. I understand some processors don't charge the fee, but you must have high volume. I learned that from google, so take it with a grain of salt, and it was only one or two that I saw.

Thanks, government!

[Insert witty rant about pointless government regulations and expenses here]

I'm as anti gov't reg as anyone and strongly opposed to unnecessary, even job killing, gov't meddling, but PCI is a bit different as I understand it. Most of the PCI involves common sense things we should be doing anyway like being sure entire card numbers are not displayed on receipts or physically stored without proper security. CC fraud is very real and even though PCI won't stop all of it, I wouldn't be so quick to call it pointless regulation.

As for the OP, I doubt free is going to happen since PCI compliance does add expense for the provider. Depending on whether or not your business model makes PayPal a viable solution, they do include PCI compliance at no extra charge. As you might expect, this isn't free either because the rates are higher than the average merchant account. However, the overall fees might be lower depending on how you use it. You'll need to evaluate your transaction patterns to determine whether your costs will be higher, lower, or about the same.

Since you mentioned volume requirements, PP might work for you. There aren't any. If you do reach higher volume levels, they reduce the percentage rate per transaction. It won't take hours to figure out either because you just choose the plan best suited for your business and the monthly fees are plainly established. Your cost will be that fee plus the per transaction percentage based on your volume. That's it, no hidden extras. Yeah that comes all too close to sounding like a commercial, but I'm just confirming it isn't as convoluted as a lot of merchant agreements are known for.