Yeah, Website owners have had around five months to get ready, however I think the launch is about a month or so late.

It's all good tho.

Can US shop owners now accept payment/ship to UK and visa-versa?

I noticed this on the CheckOut FAQs, the VAT bit stops me from using it straight away. Obviously not designed for small, part-time businesses. Looks like I'm stuck with PayPal :

U.K. Google Checkout merchants must have a U.K. bank account and address, plus the following:

A valid credit card.
A valid company VAT registration number

that is why the US are the world leader.
US companies save 2-3% on each transaction thanks to such giants as google.
UK companies got the same now.
and for us in Poland google has only salaries that are lower than in other countries and info that our country is far away in the line for Checkout.

checkout come to Poland!

Does anyone know if there's an acquiring bank handling payments for Google's Checkout offering, or is Google actually doing the processing, handling and paying the merchant directly?

I know businesses who've had bad experiences with particular acquiring banks and if bank X is behind Google Checkout then these businesses aren't interested, but if it's Google all the way then they would be interested.

Anyone with a Google Checkout account care to shed some light on this?

Can you sign up for it yet and does Google has any further information. If so anyone have a link?

From the Google Blog:

We're excited to tell you that as of this morning, the speed, security and convenience of Google Checkout are available to online shops and shoppers in the United Kingdom.

In the United States, thousands of sellers and millions of buyers have already taken advantage of this exciting new checkout process. Now, shops in the UK can offer Google Checkout to their customers and benefit from increased sales, higher conversion rates, and lower transaction processing costs. From now until 2008, merchants that offer Checkout in the UK will receive free transaction processing for all of their Checkout sales. And just so buyers don't feel left out, we're giving them £10 off all orders over £30.

To learn more visit [checkout.google.co.uk...]

[edited by: encyclo at 2:36 pm (utc) on April 13, 2007]
[edit reason] fixed link [/edit]

Google Check out is a good deal, it will help in conversions for you. People trust that google name.

This could be a great saving for us on ecommerce transation charges

I'm really interested to see the first Adwords Advertisers to integrate Google Checkout in the UK.

I know this only launched yesterday but can someone post when they see somebody with it ...

Does anybody know when this will come to other European countries? Now that the crossed the big pond, the rest should be easy ...

I didn't notice any VAT while signing for the account (?)

Signed up quoting minimal turnover and no VAT number without problem.

The only thing that troubles me is that they say that they are registered as an e-money provider. That means that the credit card companies can treat purchases as if they are cash advances and charge cardholders accordingly. As G can afford better lawyers than Nochex it will be interesting to see if this is applied consistently.

If you do a search for Google Checkout on Google, the ad across the top says:
'Buyers get £10 off all orders over £30 & free processing for sellers.'
and points you to checkout.google.com
I've looked about a bit, and can't find any mention of this, what's the score with this?

Cheers,

Paul

Integrated Google Checkout (full level 2 integration using the XML API) on Monday this week and not had a single sale through it! Since then, i've had my usual level of sales through PayPal (I get about 2-3 orders per day).

Something that I think is really putting buyers off is that it states "Shipping and Tax calculated on next page"; whereas the current page is asking for your credit card details!

Ok, you are not committed to the transaction at that stage, but it certainly looks as if you are without being sure of the total order value!

Eeek, that doesn't sound promising. Have you had any sales since?