merchant accounts

I know a lot of people who are either professional developers or have some development background. So I asked around as to what’s considered the best merchant account system to work with. The things I’d look for were robust developer tools, a reasonable transaction fee, reliability, and promptness of payment. Yet it seems like nobody is doing this job right.

There are lots of fly-by-night places you wouldn’t trust a customer’s credit card number to. Then there are big old banks with exorbitantly high rates and zero technical ability. Then there’s the hit-or-miss PayPal experience, where your customers have to jump through hoops to pay you, and you have to actually send money to people if you want to test the system out.

Has anyone ever had a good experience with this stuff?