I am an e-seller located in Greece,am both selling via Auction sites
and my personal online site.

Biggest problem is receiving payments from US and European clients.You
either have to maintain a company in your Home country,create expensive
merchant accounts,accept online credit card payments...e.t.c (US
clients are very reluctant to give their credit card info to totally
strangers)

OR

use some of the 3rd part online Payment services like
Paypal.BUT...Paypal asks for a US based Bank account for 90% of
International sellers.Except France,Germany and a few others...Due to
the Patriot act after Sept. 11 NO US Bank will open you an account
except you go personaly there (in US) and provide them with a pack of
identifying documents (passport,Bank declarations,utility bills...)

Lets share our view on this matter...I made a wide research and am
ready to help anyone who has the same problem.

Hi John

Thanks for your offered help. I am from Macedonia and I would like to
ask you, how can I process payments thru Internetional Third Processors
, for example, PayPal, VeriSign etc. I have a problem with openning an
account.

In Belgium, where I have been working on setting up an e-commerce site
for medical technology industry reports, there is another type of
third-party companies which handle the validation and other
technicalities for you. The problem with Ogone (the company I dealt
with) is that they charge large sums even for a limited number of
transactions and still require a registered company with proper bank
accounts and so on.
Time for more entries and resulting competition in this sector?
Any possibilities for growth of companies of this type in the Balkans?