The main hassle I had initially was that customers could not get instant downloads of their products because of 2CO’s strict fraud screening, ie they first screen the order before emailing you to say it’s now okay to deliver the product. This is fine for physical products, but not for digital, where the customer expects instant access.

I overcame this by using a product called LinkLok from Vibralogix. This integrates with 2CO and lets you customise the “thank you” and download pages and also means customer doesn’t have to wait for the product. You need a bit of technical savvy to set it up and use all the features, but it works great with 2CO. Also allows an easy way of sending complimentary/free products. Vibralogix also make a similar product for PayPal.

2CO’s fees per transaction are high, but if you want to start small to test the market, it’s better to pay per transaction than have heavy monthly commitments. Generally, I haven’t had any problems with 2CO, they’ve always paid me what’s due and made it possible to sell digital products internationally long before there was any other way of doing so without a merchant account.

I know a number of locals, South Africans, that use 2CheckOut without any problems and they’re more than happy with the way the service runs.

PayFast is an option, but I see it being no different to the others, except that I think PayFast doesn’t require you to have a merchant account, therefore you aren’t tied to the bank, so if something does go wrong, it might actually be hard to track down.

Just my opinion based on what others have told me.

It just doesn’t make sense to me. And the result of this way of doing business is that they are incredibly fussy about who they will deal with. They have a whole long list of excluded businesses.

If you trade in intangibles, it becomes complex. I had a problem recently with PayPal where I used them to pay for web hosting (which PayPal defines as an intangible service) and they exclude it from their payment protection system. So when the hoster shafted me, PayPal refused to refund me.

I reckon the best thing, if you’ve got the volume, is to become a merchant with a bank and just process credit cards directly yourself. All these third party services find ways to stiff you. 2checkout, for instance, doesn’t even pay the full amount over immediately (like a bank would). They take about 21 days to pay, and they retain x percentage to cover chargebacks.

I’d rather look at using payfast.co.za, at least they are local and are governed by South African law. If they stiff you, you can open a criminal charge or sue them much more easily than you can a company that is based outside of South Africa.

When PayPal or 2checkout or AlertPay or Western Union stiff you, there’s not a heck of a lot you can do about it.