We've had a Visa and Mastercard merchant account for around 25 years. We used it without any problems. They take roughly 3.5% for the transaction fee. I can live with that, knowing the money is going to be in my business account in a few days. I had a few clients wanting to use American Express and tried that for a short period, but it seemed AE was less merchant friendly.
Now there is PayPal and it is reported to be larger than all of the other credit card companies combined. They are taking roughly the same 3.5% in transaction fees. I have PayPal to automatically sweep the business sales directly to my business account, same as my old Visa/Mastercard merchant account.
Recently, Evalon, the people that handle my merchant account charged me $59 for a fee to cover their requirements to submit 1099 information to the IRS. They charged that fee to every merchant account. Additionally, they have been charging me $29.95 per month on top of my normal percentage because my equipment and account was "non-compliant". They want me to spend $350 to $400 for a newer merchant card machine and meet some security requirements. So, I have been paying $360 per year to be non-compliant and now I will be stuck with this $59 on-time fee.
I was mentioning this to Tom at SignCraft and they have been going through the same hassles. You might want to check your statements and see if you have been paying these kinds of fees and for how long.
I decided to cancel my Evalon account and will continue to accept PayPal sales. I see the Post Office is now taking PayPal through their On-line Click-N-Ship, so I'd say the momentum is definitely going that direction. Many companies now take PayPal on line, too, including companies like B&H Photo and Video. Interestingly, Amazon does not. My Visa/Mastercard sales have dropped over the past year or two and my PayPal sales have increased.
I can always add a new Visa/Mastercard account through Wells Fargo if this doesn't work out.
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On another similar note, a couple of years ago I bought a nice computer system through Dell and set up a Dell Preferred Account to get a loan to pay off the system with no interest if I paid it off within a year. I did that with two computer systems, making sure to pay on time and pay it all off early. Now, I get a letter telling me the financing leg of their company is going to share my financial information unless I OPT OUT. I tried calling the automated system to opt out, but despite putting in the information correctly, the system said it couldn't find my account. I did this twice. This morning, I called to speak with someone offshore. They manually Opted me Out. Needless to say, I was a little crabby with that guy. I thought the government implemented new laws that prohibited companies from requiring people to opt out of something, and instead required them to Opt In? In this case, they didn't make it easy for me to opt out either.
Quite a few times a year, I get a long letter from some institution with a lot of mumbo-jumbo, letting me know of upcoming changes. Most of the time, I speed read the thing at the Post Office and anticipate reading it closer at home, but seldom do. They don't make it easy to actually see what they are changing in the letters, so a month or two later, you see some new fee or rate change. When you call, they tell you they sent out a letter a couple of months ago and advising you that you should have acted on it then to avoid the fee or changes.
I guess the point is we are bombarded yearly with this kind of hassles that take time and energy, if not a lot of money or expenses. At least I will have the satisfaction of knowing Evalon will not be getting $360 of my money next year for the privilege of taking 3.5% of my sales. I can't imagine any of my customers very happy with me if I send them an additional bill for $59 because they spent over $600 with me and I had to send a 1099 form to the IRS on them.
Hey, tomorrow is the shortest day of the year! 
Mike Jackson
Denver Chapter of the Letterheads