Noca, a Mountain View, California-based startup, has announced the launch of the beta version of its payment system – saying that it

“virtually eliminates transaction fees for online merchants. At the heart of Noca’s system is Secure Check™, a convenient, safe way for consumers to pay for content, digital media, physical goods and other purchases using their bank accounts directly from a merchant’s site.”

The fees page of their website states they offer a single fee of 0.25% per transaction – significantly lower than equivalent charges from services currently available.  They also state that they -

“offer online merchants a secure payment system with zero fixed processing fees, zero start-up costs, zero recurring costs and rock-bottom transaction fees. Dramatically increased profit margins for you, and a fantastic e-commerce experience for your customers.

As an alternative to the incumbent “plastic” solutions to e-payments, Noca provides a modern, secure and intuitive way for any online business to break free of their stagnant service providers and gain a distinct advantage in a tight economy.”

Noca’s website carries a press release that they official launched on 9 Feb 2009.

Website integration is stated as being via a Lite Integration API that lets Javascript take care of all the work. You can choose to embed Secure Check directly onto a page (through an iFrame), or do a full-page re-direct to make sure the user’s experience is completely seamless.  Secure Check, it says, “is designed to integrate beautifully with your existing checkout. Just make sure you pass us a few critical values – such as, say, the payment amount – and your business will be up and running.”

Unfortunately, to gather any further information requires a merchant sign-up, and the sign-up form only allows the USA as country of residence (was sort of expected and follows the trend with American web companies nowadays – see last Friday’s Editorial).  The registration page does state that Noca is only available to US merchants with a US bank account, but that offshore merchants will be notified when international functionality is available.

I’d be interested to hear more about the service and how it performs from any American readers who take it up.  I’m willing to bet that it doesn’t make it only the eBay Approved Payments list, but appears fairly sharpish on the prohibited list – those fees destroy PayPal’s.

Ed