So, how many more programs will have dump 3rd party and go MERCHANT before

You'd be hard pressed to find a more idiotic post on this board

L3 rocks!!!

Mitch

trolls. bahhhh

What CAMZ DAN said!

Would you be interested in testing us out too?

We'll handle everything incorps in house if you need it.

I agree with:

12clicks, folks can just as easily be shaved by people using third party

Dan Camz, Netbilling will increase profit

Mitch, Netbilling is awesome!

Varius, just as important to have back up processors

Mike B, an awesome guy, full of integrity, and the guy to talk to about getting a merch account.

We have integrated our merchant account solution with Netbilling's gateway for merchants who need additional features and I have to agree.... Mitch and Karen at Netbilling are great!:-)

so HE'S the reason Jewel was playing cards with us. Shit, I thought it was about me.

Time to chime in for fun

LMFAO

LMFAO at that burn. Oooooooh buuuuuuuuurn

Thanks man. I need to reach Becky. Can you send me her contact info please?

Thanks, Mitch

Hit me up I think we can do buisness

No problem, I'll get you two in touch tomorrow

Much appreciated

no but I do find it Ironic the dolphins hold the only undefeated season and that in a year that the Fins may not win a game the same year the Pats win all of them.

And you had to say this why?

this is completely incorrect. Its been common knowledge for at least 7 years that in the end there would be only 2 and they'd be epoch and ccbill.

so I don't know who this "everyone" is you speak of who was trusting their money with ibill.

Good thread..

Merchant accounts are great (and so is Netbilling I might add). All of those people complaining about chargebacks etc., need to probably look at their sites. Think about this. What would happen if alot of the 3rd party processors did go under? The porn industry would be a much better place for porn. No more shitty sites, because the higher chargeback rate would put them under. Those who take the time to ensure their sites have higher quality content, maintain their sites appropriately etc would have nothing to worry about. It would change the way we do porn. Third party billers do nothing but give Joe Schmoe the ability to take photos of his ex-girlfriend and throw em on the web for $24.95.

this is also far off the mark.

How so? It was my opinion and a generalization, but also based off of experience, but please feel free to enlighten me. If someone provides a shitty product without a simple way to get processing done, they wont have a way to sell the product. Merchant accounts are much better for our business (mostly because fee's etc are lower, and we can decide who we want to process). Just like Camz_Dan stated, we wanted to be in control of our billing and our business. For our sites our chargeback ratio is damn near non-existant. Why? Because we offer a quality site for our members, custom content and great customer service. The few chargebacks we do get are either because they spouse found out or their kid got the card., either way its < 1% by far.

If owners of some of these sites took the time and quit trying to make 1 million sites that all look the same, they might actually make more money. Besides managing 1 really good site is 100x easier than managing 100 bad ones.

custom content, quality of sites, and great customer service are irrelevant to the overall chargeback picture in the current climate of adult and really have ZERO to do with 3rd party billing.
You're also confusing a couple different issues in an attempt to make your business model sound like the one everyone else should follow.

First off I am not saying our model is for everyone. Each person runs their business their own way. The comments were brought up in this thread about Merchant accounts and how there are so many charge backs and one would lose their merchant account.

To me our success in having a low charge back ratio is absolutely content, customer support which is where my statements were based. For third party processors, to me they are a rip off, do we use them in a cascade? Yes, but only if our primary merchant is off line. Why would I hand my money over to a 3rd party processor to do the exact same thing we can do better in house? BTW, I agree my comments were not as clear as they should have been, I have a tendency to do that on the boards. Maybe we have been lucky and our fraud ratio has been fairly low where other companies have a higher occurrence of fraud and thus meaning more charge backs.

Good discussion you guys are having

The only thing I would like to add is that I am glad that there are third party billing companies. I am not suggesting that no one use them. We cascade. it is a shame the the times have changed to exclude quality amateurs from starting a new site with their own merchant account that they have to go to a third party to build up volume to get an account of their own.

There are a lot of people (Joe Shmoe's) that started out with a web site of them and their wives. including me. What about great quality sites like some people in this thread. Venus, Awesome stuff and quality content. Another that comes to mind is Naughty Allie Naughtybank.com they run an excellent site and quality program. All started as small merchants now billing big numbers.

I hope that we do not create a system that squeezes out the productive individuals and make it a business that only organized corp's can start.

As someone who works directly with 400 amateurs with our CamZ network and AmateurCamZ it is important that they continue to have the ability to do their thing on their own.

Have fun.

Merry X Mas

I completely agree with you Dan. Of course, we can process for anyone but the restrictions lie at the bank level. For membership sites or other "high risk" businesses, banks do not want to take the risk on a startup or small merchant. However, we can easily place most merchants doing $40k per month or more offshore or domestically.

Of course for products both adult and mainstream, there is no minimum.

Mitch

There are some smaller third party processors out there like Verotel that have been around for years successfully but keep in mind that there are thousands of webmasters that do not read the boards that did not know Ibill was in trouble until it was too late and so many lost alot of money because of it.

We like to work with merchants that process over 30k per month but if you do 15-20k and are growing, we can incorp you in the EU and set you up with a merchant account. While we do provide our own gateway, we would recommend you use Jettis or Netbilling's gateway to take advantage of tools such as customer support, password management, and hosted join pages. This was, you have the lower rates and flexibility that come with having your own merchant account with us and at the same time, don't need to build an infrastructure in-house.

Thank you for the mention. We are happy to be working with you.

Is it possibe to get a merchant account from a Canadian bank. And use netbilling?

Hi,
You can't get a merchant account in Canada for adult. However, you can work with with Paygea and Netbilling and process and have payouts in CDN i if you would like to.


Let me know if you want more info.

Absolutely - Contact our sales department Monday for more information.

Mitch

Hi,

Post a phone number or ICQ and I will have you contacted today.

Thanks, Mitch

Hi,

For those of you who are unclear on the benefits of having your own merchant account here are some other facts for you.

You will have full disclosure on ALL the transaction that are attempted thru your website, not just the approvals. That gives you knowledge on why cards transactions are being decline. Valuable information for webmaster programs to analyze if their traffic dollars are worth the cost and who is sending "bad traffic".

You will have full control of all the fraud scrubs on your sites. The 3rd party billers do not even let you know what they are..

You can have custom join forms and custom emails receipt ( a great marketing tool ) for your other sites.

Those are just a few. Feel free to contact me for more!!!

Good stuff Karen

Wow, some crazy ass answers..

1) Having your own merchant account does not mean higher sales volumes. It means more control and sometimes that control means starting out with much higher scrubs.

2) Only companies with a proven track history of low chargebacks and refunds. This takes out the majority of large programs which is why the majority use 3rd party processing.

3) More support, staff, 24/7 phone/email support, having to watch every transaction, every rebill, all the time, 365 days of the year. Is a major undertaking for any company.

4) The owners ass is on the line, some want personal guarantees, and with #3 - that's enough for me not to pickup a merchant account anytime soon.

5) Huge companies can't just move to a merchant account. It would take them years to slowly move sales over. If they went to fast they could get into CB problems with the other processor.

6) The banks have limits to what they want. They may only be adding companies doing 100kish or lower amount monthly sales. Adding on a company that pushes 10m a year is a lot for a bank when they have ratios of high risk vs low risk accounts to reach.

7) With both 3rd party and Merchant accounts, you can view all transactions even decline reasons. You can customize your join forms an emails. You can customize almost the exact same thing across both.

8) With fraud scubs, yes a merchant account gives you direct control. But it isn't like you can just open up with the scrub open. It often starts tighter than the 3rd party processor and unless you run a ton notch support / login support system, you will keep your scrubs on just as tight as the 3rd party guys.

9) Staying with #8, if you run a top notch support system on a 3rd party processor, bringing your chargebacks / refunds / complaints down to almost nothing. You can talk to the processors and they can do 'magical' things for you.

---

I have worked with plenty of clients with merchant accounts and plenty without.. Not a single program stands out because of a processor setup, cascade setup, ect.

Yes, processors and the banks can cost us sales sometimes due to 1000's of possible issues, just like your member that canceled because he didn't email support telling you he couldn't login in for 1 of 1000's of stupid reasons.

You have some valid points but some incorrect ones too.

Having a merchant account does not mean having to manage you own customer support or watch every transaction. This is what companies like NETbilling does for you. You are at the exact same risk with our without a merchant account. The chargeback ratios are the same for both. You can lose your ability to process through a third party processor just as you can with a merchant account for the same reasons. It makes no difference.

I can tell you that many, many of the largest programs in the industry have their own merchant accounts as well as some utilize third party processing as well but more and more are getting their own merchant accounts daily because of control and money saving reasons.

Thanks, Mitch