Quote:
Originally posted by Kimmykim
OH I know they don't care about porn. And they probably don't care much about soft goods online either, since I can't see it being a significant amount of their business, coupled with the fact that it's impossible to 'prove' delivery under their current set of standards.
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I have three words for everyone: Verified by Visa.
This Visa Program for the Internet took effect in the EU Region of Visa this past April. It takes effect here in Visa USA April of 2003. Essentially it turns a card not present transaction, which are what all of ours are, into a card present transaction. It is fairly complicated to explain ? pretty simply to use.
A merchant (or in our case an IPSP) has to buy software and hardware that is certified by Visa. This is called a Merchant Plug In. EPOCH has had this installed and certified since August. It is tested and it works.
When a cardholder joins a site, they will be prompted for a pass phrase. This is something the cardholder has to do with his / her issuing bank. It is NOT required, yet, by issuing banks to register their cardholders. It is up to the banks.
IF the cardholder has registered the card with their bank, then a 3 party transaction occurs (cardholder / third party processor / Visa): The session is turned over to an unrelated processor and that processor gets the cardholder pass phrase and verifies it through a system at Visa so that all three of those parties KNOW that it is the registered cardholder using the card for that transaction. IF the transaction is one whereby the cardholder is registered and the pass phrase does not match, then the transaction is declined. If not, then it is completed.
Here are the benefits:
1. It is fast? no balk time.
2. As long as we, the merchant, have the plug in (and we do), we have chargeback protection for the most common reason code ?It wasn?t me.?
3. If the bank is registering and the cardholder has not, too bad for the cardholder ? they eat the transaction ? no chargeback rights for ?it wasn?t me?.
4. It finally makes cardholders responsible for their purchases and a code is added to the transaction which makes it impossible for the Issuing banks to just chargeback transactions because they are marked High Risk and Internet.
There are drawbacks as well:
1. The economic loss is on the Issuing bank ? not us, however the chargeback can still count against our ratios.
2. This is friendly fraud protection only. Webmasters have to make sure proper disclosure is there. A cardholder can?t deny he / she bought the content, but they can say they were billed unfairly or the content was not as promised.
3. This adds costs to IPSP?s like EPOCH. Our rates will not go up when this starts.
Friendly Fraud has cost EPOCH and Webmasters millions over the years. This helps somewhat. Moreover, it shows that someone is listening at Visa and is trying to give the digital world some tools.
It?s not much, but it beats the past.
Chris
CEO EPOCH
PS: The Team at EPOCH will be at InterNeXt 2003 - in force - to answer all of your questions and to unveil an exciting new product. Register for our Press Release of January 6, 2003 at
www.epassporte.com and visit us at Booth 204 in Vegas.
Happy New Year GFY?ers!