Merchant accounts, paypal and sagepay

Hi All, UK based question here

I have a question about setting up the payment gateway and merchant account. So far I understand that a shop needs a gateway and a merchant account to accept online transactions. I am currently split between paypal and sagepay.

I understand that with sagepay direct, i can opt to let sagepay setup/apply for the merchant account but with paypal i am confused as to the payments pro pricing structure. Therefore on top of the 1000+ transaction 10p fee i get a % (or 40p) on each transaction to pay for the merchant account. Info on link below
http://www.sagepay.com/products_service ... es/pricing

Does paypal webpayments pro include a merchant account by default or do i need to get that as well on top of their tiered transaction pricing structure? fee table below
https://www.paypal.com/uk/cgi-bin/websc ... es-outside

I am a bit confused as to what paypal offer on their payments pro product.

EDIT: What i am trying to do is offer a client a side-by-side (financial) comparison of both systems

mate, from what i understand sage pay will charge you a monthly £20 fee in addition to the charges for processing the card. e.g. 2.5% for visa and matercards and 30p for debit cards (example). sage pay is just a processing system, you will still need to apply for a online merchant number from your bank or some online merchant number suppliers. this can be a nightmare as well if you are not a limited company or have limited credit worthiness. they will definatly keep some money keep for 30 days in the begining as security for every order you process. in some cases hold back 5% of revenue for upto 180 days called a "rolling reserve" you can negotiate these things after 6 months.

paypal on the otherhand is pretty much what you see what you get. no monthly fee and each trasaction has a specific charge to it. paypal also do credit checks etc but will not be as stringent as the banks.

in either case, do your research well and make sure you shop around. youll be amazed at how some merchant terms are different from others.