eCommerce Tycoon

**ADAM Web Design** · 06-07-2006, 01:00 PM

Here's the scenario:

I've got a few clients who, while being Canadian merchants, predominantly deal with the US marketplace with their e-commerce websites.

I recently stumbled across a site, canada-merchant-accounts.com (no hyperlink because I'm not really sure they deserve one), that apparently offers US merchant accounts to Canadian merchants by acquiring a US bank account through Harris Bank (who I'm in touch with now, waiting for call back) and Authorize.net (who told me they don't deal with Canadian merchants).

So there has to be some sort of legal thing I'm missing.

What is required for any merchant to be considered a US merchant? Is it physical presence? Mailing address? US phone number? What?

Thanks.

**KML9870** · 06-07-2006, 02:23 PM

Sometimes the difference between Canadian& US merchants is as narrow as a river or lake (hehe, I'm just on the US side of the Niagara river & Lake Erie from Fort Erie)

Anyways, on to something possible useful instead of smartalec....

My step-mother lives in Halifax and uses merchant-accounts.ca for predominately US transactions.

**ADAM Web Design** · 06-07-2006, 03:45 PM

Thanks, Kandi.

But unfortunately, I didn't make myself totally clear. I do apologize for that. Let's see if I can restate the question a bit differently.

I know I can get US dollar merchant accounts here, and I've got the connections for that. The problem is that, in Canada, the discount rates and fees are ridiculously high when compared to their US counterparts.

http://www.merchant-accounts.ca/merc...tes2.htm#lower

As you can see, the discount rate is 3.95% "and lower" (lower tends to be around 3% for non-profs or special stuff and that's about as low as it gets.) PayPal is actually the least expensive alternative in Canada, and that's just ridiculous.

What I'm after is a US-based merchant account/gateway provider that will offer the same rates to Canadian merchants dealing with US customers as it would to merchants on the other side of the border. In other words, US dollar processing subject to US discount rates, but on the Canadian side of the border. Ideally, without the US incorporation dealy.

Hope that makes a little more sense.