best way to accept payments for online websites

[dogbane26]

I am just wondering what anyone thinks about if say you were to build a website selling seeds, and products;

What is the best way to collect payment?  

Western Union, Paypal, cash in the mail.  

The reason I say cash is it is a hassle to convert money ive heard.  Ive sent cash to a guy in Curacao onetime, and once to Australia.  

Ive even heard international money orders don't always work that well.

What does anybody think is the best method for accepting payment for goods?  

Western Union is nice but im not sure if they have them everywhere.

[judih]

cash gets stolen. Not a good idea.

[laughingwillow]

paypal.

not cash.

paypal.

[Amomynous]

There is no good way to accept payments.

LW is probably right -- paypal is probably the easiest and most convenient to set up, but they're a little on the evil side, and they care what you sell. A few years back I know several kava vendors, for example, who had their accounts immediately revoked when paypal decided that they would not allow kava to be sold via paypal. And with paypal there is no way of appealing such a decision; they do what they want.

Credit cards? It's pretty hard to qualify for a merchant account without a physical retail store. But there may be a few processing services (like authorize.net) that you may want to check out. But CC companies are a bit evil too. I used to have a CC account for a company (not ethnobotanicals -- much more "normal") and one day the processor decided that my parter and I had to take out a signature loan to personally guarantee a year's worth of revenue, "just in case" people decided to start not paying us. Again, there was no process for appeal, so we had to take out the loan.

Really, if you want to exchange payments, you have to make a deal with the devil no matter which way you go. You just need to find the best devil.

[laughingwillow]

Interesting. I never considered the gray area botanical aspect.

lw

[dogbane26]

I was also wondering what is all required to start up a business like selling seeds online?

Im not worried so much about what id sell,designing the website,  growing the plants,  what im concerned with is   the legal stuff.  

Like Phytosanitary certificates.  Do I have to charge a phytosanitary certificate to send seeds overseas?  

I mean I know people in the US wont ship plants to the citrus states (California, Florida, Arizona, Texas,) but im not thinking of shipping plants.    

I just want to sell seeds and live in a Caribbean country.  I know most of the customers will be in the US, Europe, Australia.      

 If seeds arn't sent in soil why does it matter?

It just wouldnt be worth it if i had to charge a 100.00- 200.00 for a phytosanitary certificate.   I know Nindenthena they charge that much for shipping here to the US.   If i ever want to order anything from them I will find someone on Shaman-australis and tell them what I want, send them the money and then they send me the seeds.  

That would save me 150 dollars of nonsense throwing money down the toilet.   Id rather take the 150 and give it to the casino.