You are going to have to invest money to make money.
You don't even process VISA, which probably means you can't afford to.
I was going to suggest your own merchant account and go with Netbilling, as CCBill and Epoch are probably the only two processors left. But if you can't afford the VISA fees, I doubt you could afford to get your own merch account.
Also, up until recently we had been using Epoch for many many years, and never had a problem with checks. Do they have a variation of your story, perhaps?
