Cheap & easy merchant account and payment solutions for therapists, counselors, psychologists, private practitioners

I recommend Propay - http://propay.com -- The 59.00 annual fee and near-instant setup. You can use this for face to face customers as well as taking credit cards over the phone or through a website (with a 3rd party shopping cart solution such as the one at http://www.payconcepts.net/about_shopcart.php for 12.95 per year ).

I also recommend that you use Paypal - http://paypal.com . Clients/customers can use Paypal with a credit card even if they don't have an account by following the little link that says: "Guest Checkout" or "Don't have a PayPal account? Use your credit card or bank account (where available). Continue"

Another option: http://www.professionalcharges.com -- I don't have any experience with them. The annual fee is steeper than Propay.com and the per transaction charge is .75 instead of Propay's current .35. However, Propay does have a monthly ceiling of $3,000 and a per-transaction limit of $500 (you can break larger payments into two to bypass this restriction.)

One advantage of Propay.com over ProfessionalCharges.com is that with Propay you can get started same-day -- No contract to sign, nothing to fax in, no credentials required. They also have a debit card which is free to you - So you can withdraw funds from your account after 3 days from any ATM. Propay also has a card reader (which I own) but you end up having to re-initiate the software for each transaction when swiping the card because we therapists deal in low-volume.

I use a combination of Propay and Paypal for my own practice.

One additional note: Propay.com does offer a card swiper. You can use it with an internet connection, or just with a computer (desktop or laptop with a USB 2.0 connection) without being connected to the internet. If you are connected to the internet, you go to Propay's website and log in and start the card swiper software (Does not work with Macs). Then you press a button to turn the swiper on and swipe the customer's card. Then you verify the information on the screen and submit the charge.

Without an internet connection you turn on the swiper, swipe the card and the card data is retained on the swiper/reader. Then when you get to an internet connection you can connect to Propay's website and upload the data from the card swiper to Propay. (You'll keep a log of the name and charge of all transactions.)

A caveat for therapists like myself who may only do a few charges a day: You will have to restart the card-reader software on Propay's site each time you use it as the interval between charges (60 minutes or more between client payments) will cause the software to time out and log you out. It's more convenient IMO to simply type the numbers in on the screen.

For with no internet connection at all -- you can also call in the card data -- say at the end of the day -- by phone. This has been handy for me on several occasions when my internet was down.