The Internet is an exciting environment for professional genealogists to market their services. With global reach at an economical cost, they can reach new clientele from all over the world and interact with them via email in minutes. They can readily clarify research requirements and easily come to an agreement on research costs. Despite this remarkable capability, accepting payments for services can still be awkward, and to say the least, the new methods of electronic payments can be very confusing.

Professional research services vary greatly in scope ... from the level of services they provide, the number of researchers in the company, and the volume of their annual business to name but a few. Larger firms can more easily adapt to the new technologies that enable immediate electronic payment on the Internet. Most of them probably have a Merchant Account - the basic financial mechanism for accepting credit card payments - in traditional "bricks-and-mortar" businesses as well as on the Internet.

Merchant Accounts are often expensive and not practical for smaller businesses typical of many professional research services. A practical alternative is to engage the services of a "third party credit card processor". Instead of having to acquire a merchant account yourself, these companies own merchant accounts with the additional rights to use that merchant account to accept credit card orders on behalf of others.

Costs vary, but typically credit card processors charge small volume users a couple of extra percentage points on the transaction in comparison to having your own merchant account. Other fees may apply for currency conversions and transfers. However, some are available with free set-up and no recurring monthly fees. Charges are based solely on use.

California based PayPal is the most popular service used by professional genealogists today. Their web site indicates they have over 20,000,000 users worldwide, and payments can be sent and received in U.S. Dollars, Canadian Dollars, Euros, Pounds Sterling, and Yen. Payments can be then transferred to your local account in many countries. Some users have observed that establishing an account with PayPal can be a little confusing, but when it is set up, most have found it to be an easy and effective tool for processing payments. The recipient incurs all costs associated with making payments. See https://www.paypal.com/ for additional details.

Moneybookers is a London, England based service. Like PayPal, allows you to send and receive funds electronically, but one fundamental difference is that some fees are borne by the sender -- 0.75% of the transaction value, or up to EUR 1.50. Additionally, the sender is charged for uploading money to their Moneybookers account. Moneybookers does offer a wide variety of currencies that it can process. For additional details, visit http://www.moneybookers.com/app/.

Based in Malaysia, Aucpay (https://www.aucpay.com/) is another online credit card payment alternative. It has its roots in payments for online auctions, but appears to offer similar capabilities as PayPal and Moneybookers.

As a word of caution, e-commerce services are evolving rapidly on the Internet. Some that looked like promising players only a few months ago have now disappeared so there is an element of risk. Even the terminology is not standardized ... making evaluations difficult and less reliable than one would hope. Before getting involved with any service, ask around. Posting questions to the genealogy new groups or mailing lists is an excellent way to get feedback. When you do engage the service of a third party credit card processor, start small. Become familiar and comfortable with the service before relying on it for more significant business.

John Holwell is the proprietor of genealogyPro. You can provide feedback on this article by emailing him at

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