Regarding stymiee’s first message, I skimmed over it, but I wanted to say one thing.
Regarding the deposit of the funds, some companies do it in 5 days and it isn’t because they are making interest, they could care less about that as it is so little. What is of concern to them is fraudulent transactions. That gives their risk & fraud department some extra time to investigate the transactions if need to be before just handing over the funds and with card not present transactions, fraud is a lot higher.
Do know that processors loose BILLIONS each year on fraudulent transactions. Society may think the bank that issues the card (issuing bank) is losing money here and they never do. The merchant or their processor (provider in most cases) is the one that always pays.
You need to realize that many of the things that companies do is to lower their risk as this business is very risky and if you are not careful, will drown yourself. I know of one provider that lost 250K on one hosting company that went out of biz and it would have been over a million, but they found someone to buy the company out instead, so it cost them 250K instead.
It shouldn’t take 5 days unless the processor explicitly tells the customer that they are a high risk merchant and they need to do this because f the potential for fraud. Otherwise it should never take more then a couple of days. Five is unecessarily long for the average merchant.
Who sets this standard? Have you ever worked in the risk & fraud department? For most companies 3 days is enough, but many merchants 5 is required, such as high ticket items, etc. Most people do not have excellent credit, so I can understand why. A few days isn’t going to hurt them, they shouldn’t be runing on the low of cash flow anyhow, not to affect them within a day or two.
The merchant must give and take, same as the provider.
As long as the provider informs the merchant of the delay then it’s cool. But then it should only be for very high risk merchants such as large ticket electronics over the Internet. Just being an Internet merchant, alothough riskier then a brick and mortor store, should not see a funding delay. As a rule, funding shouldn’t take more then two business days.
Well, even your biggest providers take longer than 2 days! I see 3 to 5 more of the standard. Take TMS, I think that is what they offer. Big deal, a day or two, who cares. They shouldn’t be concerned about that, but about SALES. Without it, you have nothing!
Who cares? The merchant. I speak to about 20 ner merchants everyday and how quickly they get their funds is one of the most important topics. Not too few businesses need their funds ASAP so they can replenish their inventory as they run a very tight ship.
100% absolutely true. Well, the sales part anyway.
[size=2]If they are the size of Dell, then yes I can see how a day or two can hurt. If they have inventory, are you going to tell me that they have their inventory turn over rate down to a day or two as they are constantly buying new merchandise every day, to require the money? They already have the money tied up in inventory, just think of it as they haven’t sold it yet, they sold it though, now a few days will not hurt as if they didn’t even sale that particular product to that customer, they would be waiting much longer anyways. What I’m trying to say is even before the sale, they their money is tied up in the inventory, and if their average turnover rate is 30 days, then 3 or 4 days funding will not matter as they are already waiting 30 days to turn over their inventory, which they should have much tighter controls on it - shorter time periods. This gets too deep into the accounting financial standpoints of how a business operates. It is a big deal to most as they do not have the knowledge in these two areas to fully understand the big picture.
Small and medium sized merchants often have a shoe string budget. They need every dollar ASAP to cover other costs beside inventory. Many operate with less then $100 in their business accounts and waiting one day can mean a dozen bounced checks or worse. I’ve had more then one merchant break down and cry on the phone because they made a small mistake that meant a small amount of money coming later rather then sooner. The consequences to their business was enormous.
Hello,
I have a site where I must sell some software and now I have a client that
wants me to make a site for adults(not porn but there will be naked pictures and so on)
Also he wants that the credit card procesing to be “hidden”(not redirected on
a ccbill page or something like that)
->when a user come to the site and want to buy he must remain on the same server complete the forms on his site(he only see the logo of his company–not redirected to a ccbill page for instance),the data are encrypted and send then to the billing processor
I read on netbilling.com site that they can do that(accept adult content also)
and receive this mail from them when I asked how money i will have in my pocket after a month if I have 10 clients that pay 50$(10X50$=500$)
Keep in mind that Netbilling is only a gateway & not a cc processor. They have partnerships with adult processors though.
You need to verify that that 6.25% that they are quoting also is for the CC processing. Netbilling charges 1.5% or something like that on top of CC processing. Is the $99 one time payment or monthly? I take it the $25.00 might be the monthly gateway charge but that is not spelled out. What are the $.65 & $.90 payments. The percentage that she is quoting does that include a CC processor or only a gateway. If that does include a CC processor, after review of the site / credit history of the merchant account owner(s), the processing fee might be higher.
Most gateways have an API that will allow processing on your website. LinkPoint does, Authorizenet.com does (but that gateway does not support adult), and Verisign does also.
You mean if you can find a processor that will take an adult site, authnet wont allow you to use their gateway service? Why would they care, they aren’t taking on any risk?
well since the thread is all about cc processing and merc.accounts here’s my contribution:
where is your client’s company located?
-USA case
netbilling is a gateway as being said. The % you got quoted by Karen most probably doesn’t include the bank %. Adult sites require high risk merchant accounts and the requirements for them are INSANE at moment. It’s near impossible to get a merchant account for processing adult at the moment in USA (all banks will decline you instantly) and if you do the min. required volume of transactions will be over $100k/month. 3rd party co. like ccbill,ibill,epoch and jettis won’t allow you to pass the CC details in your server,so you’ll have to use their join pages. Additionally you’ll have to pay $750/year fee to VISA and possible $750/year for accepting mastercard. AMEX has stopped accepting adult sites.
Europe case
You can get easier a merchant account there than in states, but still you’ll have to pay a heavy fee $2-3k and keep a min. monthly amount of transactions close to $50k. A good connection with a bank can bring down the monthly requirement, but I don’t know any to recommend you. The only stable solution in Europe through a 3rd part processor is ccbill. (you dont pay any visa/mc fees)
If your client is serious for starting an adult site and he is ready to spend money, time and effort he should get an account through ccbill, epoch or jettis (avoid ibill and merc. account even as thought). Best customer support comes from ccbill. You can contact mark @ ccbill.com for sales questions you may have.
Curtis, I know a CFO for a small ISO and I know for a fact they are not on the hook for fraud. Are you referring to the acquiring bank when you say “processor”? If they were there would be no way they could stay in business. They are, however, responsible for chargebacks and this is where most of the underwriting comes into play from what I understand.
Also, unless it is a high risk account, reputable processors will always deposit funds in 2 business days (48 hours). The exception is when the weekend comes into play. For instance when batches are processed on Thursday it may take until Monday or Tuesday to get your money.
Funny thing I am having a credit card issue right now with a hacker. He is downloading these cards I mean hundreds from somewere and checks them on my site. I am not sure if he is checking them to see if they are good or just to have fun and bug me because he usually runs charges of 500 to 2,000. So far today he has made 14 charges for 500.
Funny thing is I use Cardservice International and you don’t like them. I do pay high fees and would like to see if there might be another option for me. I do about 40,000 a month off my supplements site in charges. Let me know what you might suggest I do. I have blocked his IP but 5 minutes latter he has another one. I figured if I quit he would go away but that is not the case. I could take credt card processor offline set up and ecription page but then I would have to store credit cardsfor 2 years. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. God Bless Joe
I was talking about the merchant provider is in first line of having to pay and if they can’t, then I think it goes to anyone in the backend, payment processor (Global, etc.) and then the aqurier bank. That is why the merchant provider (ISO/MSP) makes so much money as they are taking the risk and responsible for all chargebacks.
Do you mean he keeps processing a bunch of false transactions and creating a lot of work on your part doing voids or running up a bunch of costs in transaction fees?
What kind of rates are you paying? How is your personal credit?
I use Cardservice (http://www.merchantaccounts4less.com) and have been very happy with them. Great customer service, online account access, etc. If you have been processing with them for more than 6 months you can request a rate review of your account and get a rate reduction if your chargebacks are not excessive.
If you are happy with the service, then there is no need to move and I feel the rates can become trivial at that point. You are currently paying whatever you are, why change it? Your happy, their happy, this is a service industry, like the old saying goes, you get what you pay for!
