Originally Posted by srockhard

I've been recently going through the application process with Netbilling. If you don't know what it means to have your own merchant account (because I didn't really understand it either) but this means that you can accept credit cards in your business name just like if you owned a sporting goods store or gas station. The application for a merchant account actually asks you what type of card swiping station you want them to provide. So once you have this merchant account you will become responsible for charges and chargebacks, customer service and really anything to do with the transfer of funds from customer to your business. The merchant account actually comes from a bank and you could try to go to your bank but it is highly unlikely that you'll get approved due to the nature of your sites content. You won't get merchant accounts from BOA, Chase or Wells Fargo either because they love porn but hate admitting it...Netbilling will help you find a bank that will work with you.

Netbilling and other gateways provide a service that makes it easy for you to manage your merchant account. That means you will see stats and support with your merchant account.

Some of the benefits of having your own merchant account vs. CCBill is that you can control your own join forms and check out. Everyone knows all the ancient CCBill forms that basically let you change the color of the background but still it says CCBill all over it and just extra tiny print it shows your company name. You have to use this page when you use an IPSP because your customer is actually paying them and in turn they are paying you. When you work with an IPSP your site becomes part of their portfolio and you much follow their guidelines to continue billing. When you work with your own merchant account you can control the join forms and flow of your signups.

Another benefit of merchant account vs. IPSP is controlling the scrub. What this means is that IPSP often set their scrubs really high so that they can avoid any assumed chargebacks or issues. They often block entire countries, black listed email address among other criteria which means that you loose out on those sales because of the IPSP. With your own merchant account you make the discisions on what you want to scrub. I have seen results with lowered scrubs and 100% of the time the merchant is making more money.

Hope that helps a little.