Payment Processing for Canadian Websites

The time has come for me to start sorting out payment processing on my website, YogaConnect.me. This will be the first time I've actually worked with payment processing so I'm doing quite a bit of research on the available options.

My criteria for a good payment processor for my start-up consisted of four requirements.

1. Available in Canada
2. No (significant) setup or monthly fees
3. Ability to accept major credit cards without requiring my customers to sign up with a third-party
4. High usability from my customer's perspective
5. Able to automatically activate user accounts when payments processed.

Once I found all the available options that satisfied this high-level criteria, I would compare the details like fee amounts etc. to find the most ideal system. In the end, I didn't even get that far.

Oh, how I envy Americans sometimes.

It turns out, if you live in Canada, the options are severely limited. To be specific, the following services - which are otherwise quite promising - are simply not available to Canadian businesses:

• Stripe.com (I was really excited about this one!) 
• Google Checkout
• Amazon Payments

So that leaves...

• PayPal

Well, so much for selection. The only question remaining is: does PayPal satisfy my other requirements?

No setup or monthly fees: True (for certain account types)

Ability to accept major credit cards without my customers requiring a PayPal account: True

High usability: Not ideal on the no setup/monthly fee accounts but acceptable.

Able to automatically active user accounts on my end:  To be decided.

The complication with PayPal is that their basic payment option with no monthly fee (Website Payments Standard) is designed to require manual processing of payments on my end which could impact my user experience. The alternative account with better site integration (Website Payments Pro) could improve the user experience but has a monthly fee of $35. Now, $35 isn't a huge cost but I expect I'll actually be taking a loss with even that low rate for the next 6 - 8 months while I finish developing the product, market, and put early users through free trials, etc.

So it looks like PayPal doesn't satisfy all my requirements like, say, Stripe.com would have if only it were in Canada, but it's the best option I've got. 

I'll have to give it a go and see if I can leverage my swanky technical skills to find a happy medium between user experience and not paying that monthly fee. Worst case, I suppose I'll just eat the cost until I can start breaking even. I can justify that because $35/mo is a reasonably small price to pay for a good first impression on those early adopters.

What payment processor do you use as a SaaS provider? And, maybe more importantly, which payment system do you enjoy most as an online consumer?