After setting up an online business, you obviously need a way of accepting payments. I've looked into direct debits and for a small business which is just starting, the costs are a bit expensive, as are the costs if the client doesn't money in their account.

What would be the easiest, safest and best way of taking monthly payments from a client? The payments would be the same for each individual, but different from person to person, e.g:
Client 1 pays £100 per month for 6 month.
Client 2 pays £150 per month for 6 month.

Cheers.

Have a look at Paypal or Google Checkout.

Cheers, I've got paypal just heard the withdrawel prices were a bit steep.

What do you mean by "withdrawal" prices? I've had paypal for years and have a premium account. There's fees for each transaction, certainly, but "withdrawal" prices? What are you referring to?

Withdrawal prices I mean are. When you take a payment the money goes into your paypal account, you then have to transfer it to your bank account, so transfer costs would be a better term to use. I've had my account for a few years too but its only ever been used to buy rather than sell.

Well, I kind of assumed you meant removing the money from Paypal, but there aren't any fees for transferring to your bank, so I wasn't sure what you were talking about.

There's a couple of possible exceptions. One, that it's your bank charging it and not Paypal. Two, there's some type of exchange rate going on that's creating a fee. If someone pays you in funds different than yours (like for me if they pay British pounds instead of US dollars), then there's the exchange fee. But if I kept my account in British pounds to avoid this, then transferring to my bank would then involve an exchange. If you deal with different currencies, someone has to pay the exchange. (And everything that goes around comes around.)

But if you turn that account to premium or business, you'll get the normal fees every time you get a payment. I don't think there's a way you can avoid fees. No one is going to want to pass your money around without charging. So you probably need to look into which will be the least expensive for you. You need to look at how many transactions will happen, whether there are fees per dollar amount or per transaction, etc.

For instance, credit cards will have a percent of dollar amount, but probably also a charge per transaction. For a business with a few high dollar transactions, you want higher transaction, lower percent. For a business with a lot of low dollar ones, you'd want lower transaction. Paypal has a 30c (American 30c) base fee plus the %. Unless someone has a lot of extremely low dollar things, that 30c isn't that big a deal. Then compare that with the charge for direct deposit. A note about credit cards - while that can come in really handy, it can be expensive to set up.