Slashdot Mirror
Finding the Right Online Credit Card Merchant?
"I have personally used Cybercash and Ibill for business to consumer type of online transactions and have successfully brought these into production use, but I am about to start a new project where this decision will be needed and would like to know... Which online merchant do you use and why? Also, which merchants do the major players (Amazon, et al) use?
Please spare me the hype about B-2-B and the 2/5/7 trillion dollar industry that it will become. It may become a big deal, but you can bet that the major companies are the ones who will be landing these types of contracts, not you and me. I still think the B-2-C industry is viable and there are many facets that have yet to be explored. There are opportunities for individuals and small companies to "merchantize" Web sites, as long as it is not prohibitively expensive from the online credit card merchant."
I dont know much about the issue, but I think its cocky for a cc to choose what I buy.
Fear the government that fears your guns. Fear the government that fears your computers. Remove them from my email.
PayPal is offering (in collaboration with XBank) a new business PayPal account option. I haven't read too much about it, but it's such a unliateral program that it might be worth c hecking into if nothing else.
And, since I gotta, use me (JArtis1@aol.com) as a referrer if you *DO* go that way...
"I'm not even supposed to BE here today!"
These guys Go-Emerchant have the cheapest and easiest system I've seen so far. $40/month gets you a merchant account and secure payment gateway. There are several configuration options available. They charge $40/month plus 2.49% plus 30 cents per transaction. No mus, no fuss, no liablilty for losing someones credit card info. They click on a link on your website and the item is added to their shopping cart. You can even add the link to emails and they can click on the email link to order. Tier $50 plan even hosts our website.
What can I say? I think you're wrong in assuming that small B2C sites are viable in the long term, and you're going to be wasting your time unless you're offering something that cannot be found elsewhere. And let's face it, this isn't likely. Most specialised market sectors already have thriving international mail order areas, and you'd be competing with those.
Only a few of the major players around today will be the ones to survive the B2C backlash which has begun. Amazon probably will since it has a decent customer base and a good brand name, but smaller sites, such as yours I assume, will find it hard to compete against larger and/or more established competitors that can make savings you cannot.
On top of that the security issue is a major one. As a consultant I've often seen companies involved in managing online financial transactions that could be hacked into by my little sister, let alone someone who knows what they're doing. To be truly secure you either need to go with a large, established player who has a decent reputation or, even better, develop your own. Not easy, but secure and you know nobody's going to be selling your customer's information but you.
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Jon E. Erikson
Jon Erikson, IT guru
Does anyone know of a decent merchant that will handle transactions well in uk pounds and preferably with support for euros too?
I'd like to find one that isn't for the sort of 'dumb webadmin' where they run all your shopping carts for you. I want a proper one that I can invoke from my own server, presumably by https that will leave my site feeling proper and professional.
Certainly I'm not overly impressed with some credit card systems online. The worldpay one is ugly and kept spawning new windows and using javascript refresh's to the point that even I (who regularly have about 50 windows open) was struggling to keep the plot. I've had other ones that dont properly track users and due to the fact that my modem connection broke midway through ordering they billed me twice (even though i was using a fixed IP dialup at the time i think). Surely that sort of inefficiency is inexcusable - especially considering 5 months later they STILL haven't refunded the money. Not wanting to name names there are better places to get domain names like www.freeparking.co.uk.
Thus, there cannot be a credit card that will protect your privacy.
bizrate rates online merchants and has an extensive database.
Because of the global nature of the net, currency variations will kill this idea quickly. Say I put money into my deeferbank, in UK pounds. When I buy something, I can quote my bank details & do the encryption dance. The website I have just bought stuff from then gets sent the money in local currency from deeferbank. This is necessary for the small business who don't want to have to accept 10 different currencies online - deeferbank takes care of it all. So, at deeferbank, I am now exposed to the various vagaries of the currency markets. That is not the area for a dotcom to be in.
So I am shocked that some of the major banks haven't jumped on this already.
The world needs a new currency, which for the sake of argument I will call the eQuid.
You buy eQuids at the prevailing exchange rate, similar to the Euro. Online, everyone is therefore equal, small business are insulated from the worst swings in currency speculation, and consumers get to pay the price that the website stated, without any weird FX shift stuff when the bill finally arrives. Every site knows what an eQuid is, and where they are brokered.
So, there we have it. Introduce a new currency for online trading; it's the only way to ensure a level playing field for small and big business alike.
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
1) traditional merchant account (about $30 a month) + lower discount (% of each charge, usually 1.5%-3%) + per-charge flat fee ($.25 to .35).
All the major players have decent methods for integrating their system into your site, everything from hosting the whole shopping cart to various flavors of "your cgi page calls our cgi page, we do the transaction, we redirect back to some cgi of yours with the results". The hackery involved is trivial.
After having problems with one provider who had an annoying habit of randomly double-charging customers, I settled on Anacom and they've been flawless. They've also been around a while.
Option 2 - charge without a Merchant Account. You pay about 1% more on the discount, but unless you're doing $3000 a month in sales or more, you still come out ahead. ProPay seems to be the leader here, but I have no personal experience with them [some of my SelfPromotion.com users have recommended them, though.
3) Indirect, using a web-bank service like PayPal, which just announced a business service. The rates seem a little better if memory serves, but the downside is that people have to be paypal users to use it. My advice is that you should offer PayPal as an OPTION along with (1) or (2) above.
Best,R
"World Domination - a fun, family activity"
Most traditional merchant banks offer some form of online processing. What exactly are your needs? If for only general merchandise, then choose the one that is cheapest/easist for you to administer. Because, In most cases you will have to manually authorize each transaction... I've seen some awful interfaces provided for doing this. If you have a lot of transactions to check, this task can become extremely difficult. From my experience, Cardservice International offered a good administrative interface, low transaction fees, and low monthly fees. Shop carefully, there are different CSI franchises that offer different versions of the same services...
I'll look after your credit card transaction. Just send me your CC#'s, expiry date, and other relevent details, and when you want to buy something, just send me an email and i'll process the sale for you straight away!
Go on, you can trust me.
I must first of all comment about B2B and small companies. We are small and most (80%) of our customers are B2B. In fact these are the businesses we target as they can actually afford to build a "REAL" website.
On the CC Front, we have a reseller agreement with a local merchant account company. One of our employees specializes in this area. We have connected our customers sites with both CyberCash and AuthorizeNet. We actually prefer AuthorizeNet. They have a virtual terminal customers can use to run cards manually, a real plus. I have read reports about up time problems with Authorizenet but I have had very few problems. AuthorizeNet is also more cost effective than CyberCash.
As far as things like this are concerned, I'm not really a big fan of Credit Card Companies... I would much prefer to use something like PayByCheck.com, much as Tom Smith does. They charge you less, and more people can buy your product. Sounds like a good deal to me.
They all are! These big megacorporate credit card companies are all about taking money from the people! They need to be outlawed for their usury and speculation!
The Internet is not about the buying, selling or processing of any objects or services! The Internet was designed for the FREE exchange of Information and Ideas; a community for users which has become polluted by the greedy, money-grubbing evil capitalistic corporations which seek to destroy our Internet!
Fight it! Don't use credit cards! Don't buy things online! We need to run these big corporations out of town and return the rule of the Web to the individual people!
QuickCommerce is pretty good great tech support avialable 24 hours. They are quick and offer different type of options for processing orders over the internet. Check them out
In my admittedly limited experience of setting up online merchant accounts for people (ie. I've done it twice) I've found a couple of stinkers.
These are, netbanx.com and planetpayment.com.
Reasons:
Netbanx: thoroughly unprofessional, aimed at the idiot using Frontpage or Actinic Catalog, no answer whatsoever at technical support (that's both email and phone, folks), took 2 MONTHS to set up the account, obscene charges, takes 60 days for Netbanx to release payments to the account holder.
Planet Payment: have been trying to set this account up for over 5 MONTHS now, have been sent usernames and passwords for their 'payment gate' only to find that they don't work - to be issued with some more, again not working passwords, very US centric, and obscene requirements (we had to fax copies of the director's damn PASSPORTS to them!).
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jambo
system.admin.without.a.clue
-- js.
CC's f^%* over both the merchant and the consumer so why bother? Use PayPal, they can handle credit cards in their backend I believe. Myself I like E-Gold. Has anyone managed to get the MD5 signature from an E-Gold transaction to match up? Doing it under PHP4 doesn't seem to work.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
...but you are certainly lacking in manners. If that guy is really a Troll then you shouldn't have to "prove" you're right by returning flame.
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
"31337 h4xx0r" josh1 has made a quantum leap in online computing!!!
Allegedly, on 20th July 2000, the slashdot troll and compulsive masturbator discovered an amazing new feature on his new Windows 3.1 computer - that of "cut and paste".
"17'5 4m4z1n6!!!!" he might have commented "1 c4n b3 a t0t4l W4nK3R 0nl1n3 w17h 3v3n l355 3ff0r7!!!"
"1 c4n7 w417 t00 5h0w m1 31337 AOL fr13nd5 - 7h3y w1ll b0w 70 m1 31337n355!!!
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
So, choose who you want, but you won't get a good deal.
Well I work for an e-commerce consultancy in the UK and we have developed a payment gateway which is available either as a boxed product of as a managed service. Its currently in use in serveral contries as the back end card processor for several major Telco e-commerce offerings.
Integration is via a very simple thin API (using Baltimore libraries to protect card details in transmission if its a remote site) - we have language bindings in C, Perl, Java, TCL (I think), ColdFusion and a COM object for ASP's on win32 platforms.
Assuming that you want a managed service then we charge is a flat 1% of transaction revenue (on top of whatever your aquirer charges) and provide secure online authorisation, settlement, credit and reversal functionality - the ability to process a large number of different card types (MC, Visa, Amex, JCB, Delta, etc...).
In addition the bureau provides fraud detection functionality (card velocity checking, blacklists, max/min order values etc...)
If you're interested then take a look at
http://www.commercelink.co.uk/
(appologies for the ugly site - its being rebuilt)
or drop me an email
cheers
Tom
Does anyone know how PayPal is able to transfer money from person to person with CC transactions without making themselves liable? What if the person you buy something from over PayPal doesn't send it -- How is PayPal not liable? How do they do it without requiring the sellers to have a merchant account?
I'm asking because I'm looking for a way to do something similar myself -- to be able to process CC transactions without requiring my (very small) customers to each get merchant accounts...
Thanks.
You can set up a web interface, or charge through the Quickbooks 2000 accounting package.
A legit, registered installation of Quickbooks 2000 or 2000 Pro is required to use this!
It was easy to set up, and I got approved in less than 24 hours.
Just my 2 cents, check it out here.
Out of order? Fuck! Even in the future nothing works! - Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis) "Spaceballs"
indeed ;-)
there are two kinds of people in this world - those who divide people into two groups and those who don't
As far as I can tell, we're the most clueful PSP in the UK. I think we're the only ones to have done a proper re-implementation of the banking protocols, and our solutions are implemented using Perl running on Linux. Our client-side code is all open sourced using the X11 license, and we provide Perl, C, and Java implemetations for Unix and NT, as well as more than one shopping cart implementation. And we have some really cool stuff lined up, including eFalcon fraud detection and some other things I can't talk about just now.
My work address is what you might guess (the local part is "paul"), so feel free to mail me any questions, though where appropriate I reserve the right to pass them on to the enquiries address in London!
--
Xenu loves you!
On two points:
First, Whoever you go with, read the terms and conditions before you sign up. They do differ, and if you're in the US, your protection against unfair contract terms is very weak indeed (by the standards I'm used to). A couple of hours patient and careful reading (using a photocopier to blow the small print up to A3 helps lots) and comparison will pay dividends. It's rarely harder to understand than source code, and usually a lot easier.
If there's anything you don't understand, that's what lawyers are for (and, incidentally, pitching up with a prepared list of questions will endear you no end to your lawyer and take quite a lot off the bill.).
Second, If you're in the UK, or for that matter anywhere in the EU that has already implemented the Data Protection Directive (I think everywhere has), then you have an obligation to make sure (no further than asking, nicely, for a warranty that this is so) that the card supplier has proper data protection in place.
I've had more than a couple of these across my desk in the last three months, and most of them refer to the last Data Protection Act (the 1984 one now nearly completely defunct) and none at all - prior my ministrations - spoke at all of the need for someone in the relationship to take care of the obligation to process data fairly.
As usual, this is general advice - and on the first point about as general and obvious as "don't forget to eat, sleep and breathe" - not specific recommendations for your circumstances (which I'm almost certainly not licensed to give in your jurisdiction). Anyone daft enough to rely on stuff they find on the web when making decisions that might cost them money or liberty is probably dim enought to try suing in spite of a clear disclaimer, so I'm not really sure why I bother with this.
-- AndrewD
A Maze of Twisty Little Laws, All Different.
What is really special about GOEmerchant is the ease of use. No CGI Programming. It is a product related to Cybercash so no cheesy user support. the system is so simple all the user has to do is copy links and past them into their website HTML. Further, they are very willing to format emails sales reports to suit the user. Say you wanted them in a format for importing into your favorite Accounting package--no problem. Most of the offers you see advertized are BS scams with little or no user support and without focusing on intenet sales only. They can't hope to compete for support.
My company is a small company that has been processing credit card for several years now. We have the same certifications as a Cybercash/Verisign but we're much much small and can charge much less.
There are a number (over a dozen) small companies like ours that offer credit card processing and do it better (in many cases) than the big guys. You get better rates and MUCH better customer service will a smaller company.
There are other things you need to watch for that credit card merchant providers don't tell you:
1) Many merchant accounts have a ratio of USA to International credit cards they can accept (example, you must processes 5 US cards for every 1 international card to maintain the lowest rate).
2) There are always hidden fees, make sure you understand them. The common fees including a minimum monthly amount, statement fees, address verification, voice processing, chargeback research, mailing fees, keyed vs non-keyed rates, etc....
3) There are a lot of people that advertise low merchant rates but they are quoting "Merchant is present, you see the card and you have checked the person's ID" rates. The fine print might state that the "MOTO" (mail order-telephone order) rate is a full percent higher (and more in some cases)
4) Make sure your gateway uses some form of encryption. Many gateways out there, including some very popular systems, provide binary files for their API and you have no way of knowing how it works and if it is secure or not.
Plug:
We private label our API seprately and as part of our instant e-commerce builder at http://www.n2plus.com. Lowest rates around. E-mail me directly if you have more questions, I've been processing credit cards on the net for 6 years as a business.
For those who haven't tried running a retail business online, here is a basic description of how it usually works.
For you, the retailer, there are many important issues involved. You have the shopping basket application, secure CGI gateway, Merchant services, order processing and tracking, inventory and payment/order integration into your backend accounting package. This amounts to a lot of work especially for a smaller retail operation. There is a lot of responsibility involved (read liability) in handling credit card information. There is a lot of somewhat difficult programming involved integrating your frontend into the merchant account backend and providing a secure ordering environment. And last, but certainly not least, entering the transactions and inventory changes into your accounting/inventory software.
When looking for a good merchant services company there are many things to consider besides what fees are involved. Many merchant companies are adding extra value by providing extra services that make things easier for you. Maintaining your website, filling orders, maintaining inventory and keeling you accounting books current is quite a bit of work. Messing with CGI and worrying about order security are somthing you should look to your merchant services provider for.
With all that said, the best, easiest system I've been thus far is GoEmerchant. They provide the secure payment gateway and merchant services. They can even host your website with little extra charge. They will custom format emailed sales reports so you can easily import them into your accounting package backend. This product is realted to Cybercash. No, I'm not a salesman, but I've done a lot of research after having tried it the hard way with traditional merchant services. Just check these guys out along with the other services that are appearing to make life easier for Online retailers.
I can never find any information on how to use the account. The pages just had nothing but marketing, you order then you are suppose to give it to your programmers.
One thing I suggest is make sure to ask for documentation so you can see how good or bad their service is.
We use Signio...I mean VeriSign payment services, they are really good. flat monthly fee, really good and easy API that can also support checks and corporate cards if you like. They support all kinds of platforms, and they even have a pure java client. They process very quickly too..
e rnet/internet.jhtml
We also use Wells Fargo for the acquiring bank which doesn't do a per transaction fee.
http://www.signio.com/
http://biz.wellsfargo.com/products/merchant/int
There is no cost to it, but it does take 3-5 days to transfer money in your paypals account to your linked bank account.
I'm not complaining, but are trying to use the float to make money. I'm not blaming them, I'd do the same myself.
Fight Spammers!
I highly recommend iBill. We have been using them for over two years now and they have worked out very well for us.
One of the best things about iBill is that they offer 24 hour voice support for merchants. They also offer a great variety of payment methods in addition to credit card. You can also allow your customers to pay via a 900 line and bill it to their phone, as well as online check payments. Everything is managed through one central interface.
Further, they have a new affiliate program, so you can do revenue sharing on your Web site without much of a hassle. This is a great way to drive more traffic to your site, and it's all administered on their end (no cutting checks for partners).
Another cool thing is that you don't need an Internet merchant account to get started. BUT, you can upgrade to this later and keep all the code you have developed and without making your customers migrate to a new payment method.
We process a few hundred thousand dollars worth of transactions a year and have looked at the other services, but they just don't seem to offer the same flexibility that iBill does. Case
We recently went through a similar decision at my employer, a retail web site. We evaluated several options, including CyberCash, CyberSource, and ClearCommerce.
The thing about CyberCash and CyberSource is that they just act like middle-men between your system and back end credit card processors like Paymentech or VisaNet, who actually interact with customer banks. In addition to the per-transaction charges you get from the back-end processor, you'll also see per-transaction charges from CyberSource and CyberCash, so if you've got really high volume it could turn out to be rather expensive, even with sliding payment scales.
ClearCommerce is a little different: it's a software product that lets you interface your system directly with the back end processors. It's also significantly more expensive up front; however, I'm told that it pays for itself (compared to CyberCash or CyberSource) after a few years. We went with them at my employer, and I've found it to be ok - the Java API (the one I'm most familar with) is clear, and they were able to provide both higher level documentation (in PDF format) and javadoc documentation (which suggests to me that they "get" java development.)
The impression I've gotten from talking both to salesmen and to developers at other e-commerce companies is that a lot of vendors go with CyberCash, but once their volume gets to a certain point they switch to CyberSource, and then on to something else like ClearCommerce.
But, in my experience, it is not going to be the organizations themselves that will be the deciding factor, but rather the software. (At least in the public sector). If you are a developer, or designing your own, it definatly is the company.
*Carlos: Exit Stage Right*
"Geeks, Where would you be without them?"
*Carlos: Exit Stage Right*
"Geeks, Where would you be without them?"
"Got Linux?"
We use http://www.strategicprofitsinc.com out of Vancouver who act as a gateway between our website and the Royal Bank's merchant visa program. We have no complaints so far.
Matt.
http://www.fairtunes.com
Over in the UK there are far fewer B-2-B merchants out there than there are in the US (from what I can gather). I've been considering this one myself a fair bit recently, and came across a company called Secure Trading that I stumbled across by accident more than being obviously a dominant player. At first, I was a bit concerned about whether they were just a cowboy outfit operating out of a back bedroom, but a large investment company (uc.com) seem pretty chuffed with their performance (they own a bit of the operation). And no, I don't work for either of them.
With regards the argument concerning B-2-B and B-2-C and their futures, I think you're all forgetting one very simple fact. The world, and the Internet is a great deal bigger than the USA and/or Canada. There are still plenty of oppurtunities out there because there are some pretty immense markets out there that are in countries only just waking upto the Internet.
You can argue that the big players in the US and Europe are going to take a lead in those countries, but unfortunately the business minds of the new economy appear to be xenophobics, and so as long as you don't mind talking to people who don't speak English as their first language (and yeah, there are some out there apparently), you can still make a killing (although if you choose Russia, you may be subject to one instead unless you know the right people).
--
<shameless plug>
I'm in the process of setting up on-line ordering on my website right now. Most of the website is technical resources for building electronic projects using embedded processors. A recent addition, that we expect to need the on-line ordering for, is the open source MP3 player, which today is a primitive first generation design, but hopefully soon I'll have a nicely redesigned version.
</shameless plug>
Fortunately, my partner is an accountant, which has really helped. She set up a proper visa merchant account with our bank. It cost $100 up front. They take $0.65 per sale, plus approx 3%. There's a minimum $15 monthly charge, so hopefully we'll actually sell at least $500/month. The visa charges are entered using a touch-tone phone, so we didn't have to buy any equipment. They offer a terminal, for (I think) $450. With the terminal, we would get a per-sale charge of $0.07, and a little lower percentage of the sale, about 2.5% as I recall. They let you buy and add the terminal anytime you want.
It looks like there's a free software package called CCVS - Credit Card Verification System which allows your linux (or unix) box to emulate a terminal (requires a dedicated modem)... but there's a catch. It needs to be loaded with an encryption key. Redhat sells these keys for approx $1000. If anyone knows someone who can provide a key for CCVS for less, please contact me. Robin found a similar windoze based program, where they wanted a monthly charge and some percentage of the sale, on top of the percentage taken by the bank! Not cool, but I wouldn't run a windows server even if it was affordable.
Setting up the SSL stuff on the webserver is relatively easy, but you need a cert. VeriSign charges $350, so we went with Thawte, who only wanted $125 (even though they're now owned by Verisign). Again, robin did most of the work there. I generated the CSR from the server software, and she faxed them copies of our LLC papers and other business stuff. About a week later we got the cert. The cert lasts for only one year, you it looks like we have to pay $125 every year. I hope they don't jack their price up to Verisign's level!
Robin ran a test charge onto her credit card a couple days ago, and it seems to be working very nicely. The merchant appears as "PJRC.COM, LLC", which I think is much cooler than "ibill...some number".
For the on-line shopping cart, I looked at a couple of them, but they didn't have that look and feel that I want for my website, so I've been rolling my own. It's turned out to be a bit more coding than I originally thought, but still not too bad, and I'm really happy with the results. When the order is confirmed, the code just sends Robin and I an email, and makes sure the data stored in our database really matches what they filled out on the form.
I'm putting the final finishing touches on the cgi scripts right now, and hopefully it'll be on-line later tonight!
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
The company I work for, Paradata Systems Inc., offers credit card processing via the Internet. We provide a web-based kit to enable the merchant, the technology (SET or SSL) and continuous support. Paradata is affiliated with a number of acquirers and third-party processors in the US, Canada, Germany, Switzerland and the UK. Payments can be processed in a number of currencies. We offer an API that can be integrated into most front-end solutions, along with hosted pay pages or shopping cart cartridges. For further info about the technology we use and pricing see our web-site at http://www.paradata.com
Signio has since been purchased by Verisign and is now called Verisign Payment Services.
The reason why Signio came so highly recommended were for several reasons:
Obviously you're going to need a Merchant account. Singio has partnered with numerous banks and financial institutions.
Anyway, they seem to be top-notch.
-k
This is a much more complicated question than it sounds like.
As several people have noted, you basically can choose to get your own merchant account, or use a third party to effectively resell your goods or services. That's the easy part.
Getting a merchant account for an online-only business is very difficult. If you've been in business for at least two years in the real world, it will be easier.
However, I would strongly advice against the merchant account approach unless you're willing to provide real live customer service at least 12 hours a day, 5 days a week. 24/7 is better.
A key metric that credit card companies look at is chargebacks. Chargebacks are when a consumer disputes a charge, claiming either that they didn't make the charge or that the goods/services were not as advertised.
If you go over 1% in chargebacks, watch out. If you hit 2%, you're all but certain to get your merchant account revoked.
That sounds easy (just run an honest business, right?), but it's not. Credit card companies exist to serve the consumer, not businesses. Many consumers have found that it's easy to get free stuff by disputing lots of charges, especially internet charges. The burden of proof is on you to show that every one of these people did actually get and use your goods/services.
Hopefully I've convinced you to use a third party processor. Now, the question is who. This comes down to three key elements:
1) Are you selling goods, services, or both? Services include web site access ir intellectual property.
2) Are you in the adult entertainment industry?
3) What monthly transaction volume do you expect to do?
The first question is critical. Paypal only does tangible goods, Ibill only does services. You've got to find a processor that handles your kind of transaction.
The second question is important. Many processors refuse to to business with adult entertainment companies because, let's face it, many of those companies are unscrupulous, unprofessional, and untrustworthy.
Chargebacks are typically higher with adult content, both because many adult businesses are misleading ("FREE! Just give us your CC# to prove your an adult" often turns into a $59.99 charge), and because consumers are more likely to dispute adult charges ("No, Honey! I would never have signed up at cumslurpingteens.com! Someone must have found my credit card on the internet! I'll dispute the charge!")
And, finally, the third question (processing volume) will determine how seriously you are taken by your processor. If you can pull about us$20,000/month or more, you'll start to get some special treatment which will reduce chargebacks and generally make life easier. If you're going to be doing this kind of business, ask your processor if they have a premium accounts department, and what the threshold is to qualify.
Ok, so we've covered picking a processor based on your needs. Now let's move on to things to look out for:
1) Retroactive fees/chargebacks. One of the large processing houses really screwed its clients over a year or two ago by imposing huge, retroactive fees. Basically the processor (DMR, if I recall correctly) got in trouble with Visa for too many chargebacks, and Visa levelled a multi-million dollar fine, as specified in the merchant contract. Rather than eat this fine, DMR passed it on to their clients -- by withholding their revenue until they had met their portion of the fine. Ouch! It was ugly. Check to make sure your processor won't do this. Look for language in the contract that is fishy.
2) Financial stability. See #1. Do some research to ascertain that the processor is stable, pays on time, doesn't bounce checks, etc. Ask for references, how long they've been in business, etc.
3) Internet connectivity. If people can't get to your processor, they can't pay you. Is your processor colocated on both the east and west coasts at a Tier 1 provider? Or do they have a 384kbps frame from Joe's Internet Service in Milwaukee?
4) Internet political considerations. Ibill has been in several well-publicized scrapes with the RBL, but it looks like that may be over. That probably means the RBL will turn their attention to other processors. Much as I think the RBL is a bunch of power-hungry thugs, they bear paying attention to. Check that your provider has anti-spam policies, doesn't specialize in hosting spammers' accounts, and ask if they promise to capitulate to any demand the RBL may make. It's ugly, but there's not much you can do about it.
You'll note that nowhere in here do I mention rates. Expect to may almost 15% for a respectable processor that also handles customer service. Yes, that's a lot. But it's cheaper than having a full time employee to answer the phone (Visa and MasterCard merchant account contracts explicitly say that real live people must be available by phone). As volume increases, you'll pay less. But it's worth it at 15%.
Hopefully that's been helpfull. I have a lot of experience in this area, and would be happy to share more specifics. Drop me an email if interested.
If I wanted a sig I would have filled in that stupid box.
These folks seem to offer transaction services that aren't cheap, but don't require a merchant account - for us that's a big selling point.
Has anyone had good/bad experiences with them, or is it a scam?
http://www.ccslide.com/
Hah. You think I'll give your words consideration when you're posting as Anonymous Coward? Think again.
I'm developing the CC backend for a company and we went with AuthorizeNet. We tried using Ibill for a short time, but their customer service was terrible (responsive but mean) and the restrictions were ridiculous. We were also harassed by a CardServices "agent" who called us a "dictator" like "Hitler or Saddam Hussain" and insisted that we have relationships problems with women when we refused to sign up, so we really look down upon that company. I couldn't find an e-mail address on the main CardServices site to complain to, which seems very bad for a company that does business online.
AuthorizeNet has done pretty well and has reasonable response time on their support. However they did have a several hour outage last week for unknowns reasons. They never told us what happened before, during, or after. (I assume an NT-powered database crashed and took half the day to reboot/restore.) Other than that it's been real nice. They have several interfaces you can use, although the documentation isn't complete yet. We're using the one where we accept the credit card info (for recurring billing later) over our secure server and then send it to their secure server gateway with an https POST. They process it and send back a simple delimited response about how well it went. This is easily implemented in perl, and I'm in the process of rewriting our current interface to their system as a perl module.
Shortly after IBill I switched to Cardservice. I was a lot more impressed with the flexibility of their system right off the bat, and I would still say that is one of their best qualities. The problem that I had with them was that the person who set up my account, Michael Wentzell, did so improperly such that all of my transactions were creditted to a different user's account (funny thing, though, they had no problem deducting the montly fee from the account that was supposed to have been creditted). After a month of not recieving any credits (it was supposed to take around 48 hours after a sale, but I wasn't sure of this) I called Michael Wentzell up to see what was going on. He said that he was sorry about the problem, that he had found it, and it would be fixed within a week. Well, it wasn't fixed. I called him back about two weeks later and he told me the same thing. This game of me calling him and him telling me it was fixed now went on for several months until I got sick of it and went over his head to Cardservice's corporate headquarters. It was an absolute nightmare trying to get them to fix this as they refused to take responsibility for the problem or even help me figure out what the problem was. I kept getting bounced between Cardservice and Authorize.net (Cardservice resells Authorize.net's services) because nobody at either place actually wanted to help me, it seemed. Well, I finally got ahold of somebody at Cardservice who said they could fix the problem and she yelled at me for not reporting the problem right away (apparently, in her mind I was responsible for their salesman's lack of action)! Anyway, that finally got straightened out and I was too sick of dealing with people like this to try switching again. Their service works OK now that it works (it's down sometimes), and at least porn doesn't magically appear in my customers' carts. I don't know what their other salespeople are like, so maybe Michael Wentzell is an anomoly.
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Free P2P Backup, Windows & Linux
Actually, making money from the float has been quite viable. Several states fund legal aid programs from the float of money that's held in escrow by lawyers (although Cato argues this violates the takings clause of the Constitution, as it is compulsory; you can't request that you get the interest, and it can be spent on things to which you might be philosophically opposed). And my bank (USAA) seems to make money enough off float to rebate ATM charges, give a 0.5% cashback award on debit card purchases, etc. Granted, some of the cash comes from not building a branch every 1/4 mile, but float is nice.
My Blog. Sela Ward can sell me long distanc
No one else has mentioned these folks - but particularly for any North American companies they are very good. They've been around 5 or 6 years, the charge on your credit card appears as: Company Name @ internetsecure. Reasonable rates (which are actually improving), gives you the ability to accept *multiple* cc's without actually having to go out yourself and get a whole bunch of "real" merchant accounts. But - if you do have a previous merchant account, you can use that number instead. InternetSecure also lets you link a custom cgi from your site to theirs for smooth shopping. And it will call a cgi of yours once the shopper completes the transaction, if desired. They also have "special" software that screens for unusual transaction patterns in order to avoid charges that will be "charged back" to you by the user.
American Express recently stopped doing business with anything they consider to be internet based adult entertainment. Ibill qualifies because the bulk of their business is with adult sites.
While other processors still offer amex, I would advise anyone running an adult business to just not accept amex. Otherwise, when your processor appears on amex's radar and they stop processing transactions, you'll have a bushell of angry customers who think they are still subscribers, even though amex has stopped paying you.
I don't really blames amex; adult businesses do generally have higher chargebacks and create more hassles. I do with they'd take those businesses on a case by case basis, but I guess it's just not worth it to them.
If I wanted a sig I would have filled in that stupid box.
This is the problem I have rammed my head against ! None of the smaller ecommerce outsource offerings have any reasonable way of dealing with foreign currency and not even some of the expensive ones can give me a clear answer on what they can do for us here . I guess I shouldn't be surprised that American businesses are dollar centric . Your Squire Squrieson
I work for a company called POS/ware Inc. and we can handle standard credit card transactions and we also provide private label solutions. We have done work with internet credit card transactions and provide the backbone for gomez.com. Check us out if you are interested, we can provide custom solutions to many problems.
Not terribly useful for those in the US, but in OZ, you can become your own credit card gateway using Ingenico's gateway software called OCV. It connects directly from your premises to the bank via phone lines (dial-up or leased lines - tcp/ip over the internet in future) and can take requests from any type of credit card payment system, be it a web-server, IVR or any sort of tcp/ip supporting application. All the Australian gateways use it to pass their transactions to the supported banks (CamTech, SureLink, eWay - you name it!). Cut out the middle man and talk to Ingenico (www.ingenico.com.au). *Ahem* I can plug this shamelessly as I developed the bloody thing :) Cheap as chips too! AUS$2500 starts you off, and thats it! NO MORE FEES. NOTHING. Zip!
thePeto
I am working with a project in Australia that is an alternate payment option to credit cards. Our system has many "cash properties" and is anonymous. It does not require the user to have any kind of account or CC. We are still refining our API adding more and more features that merchants demand such as 'delayed payment'. For merchants, there are numerous advantages such as no minimum monthly transaction amount/fee and our transaction fees are negotiated to be 20% cheaper than your current CC transaction fee (1.4%-2.6% in Oz) You can read up more here (ugly old site) and check out our beta site in development here
I happen to know one of the programmers at TrustCommerce. Despite the somewhat boring-looking public website, they have a kick-ass payment gateway. They have geographically seperated servers with automatic fail-over so they have 100% uptime. Their API is very clean (unlike CyberCash) and they offer clients for perl, java, C, and most of the Windows gobblygook (COM objects, Active X, etc). I've also heard their support is exceptional...a 24hr hotline and well-written documentation.
Of course, *I* think the best part is that they run exclusively (well, not counting their own in-house code) on free software. All their servers run Red Hat, and they use Apache for both of their websites and (I believe) Postgres as their database.
You can probably drop a line to customerservice@trustcommerce.com if you want a quote.
(Usual disclaimer is attached: I'm not a customer, I've just seen how they do business and am impressed. More importantly, they run on the kind of powerhouse servers that geeks like me have dreams about...)