[failquicker]

This is really a question for your underwriter. As it varies greatly depending on who holds your merchant account. You are right, most credit cards are going to default to the unqualified rate anyway.

But the bigger problem is this.

If you get bare minimum information from your customers, and then for some reason you start getting more than a few charge-backs, they might close your merchant account. Which is a fun exercise in thinking on your feet =)

The best bet is to get a merchant account with an account representative that is familiar with your business model and talk to him about how you plan to proceed. You are much less likely to run into problems if they verbally signed off on your actions.

As to fees. This is really cart before the horse. You have no sales yet. Trust me, when you have a whole gang of sales, people will start tripping over themselves to process your transactions at a happier rate.