The high risk registration fee is charged per merchant account, not per site. If you have your own merchant account, you pay the fee only ice per year, regardless of how many processors you are using that merchant account through. However,if you use an IPSP (3rd party processor), those are separate merchant accounts for each IPSP and you must pay for each.

Mitch

Well, look who's in here already with one of his predictable "mister cool guy" quips.

Hey Markul, how about you go suck on a tube :321GFY
.

That's it about backup processors.

Nice try, but still not an answer.

Fraudulent transactions are a part of all websites that use Visa or MC, so why are adult sites targeted with higher rates and an annual fee?

Go get an account to sell baseballs at Pay Pal at be charged 3% with NO annual fee, but sell adult content and the processors ring the dinner bell at 14.5% with an annual fee.

The bank's problems are not the webmaster's problems. Why are we being charged to cover the bank's ass on fraud charges?

We already pay the fees for the charge back and the money is sent back to the bank. The bank doesn't lose any money on a charge backs because the webmaster pays for the fees. Money is reversed electronically and the bank MAKES A FEE from the webmaster. The processor is a simple bookie, making bank on the charge if it goes thru or is charge backed.

We don't even know the charge back fee amount?? The bank is probably charging $1.00 and CCbill jacks that up to 1/2 the charge amount, so CCBill makes money regardless. Zombaio charges 1/2 for a charge back. So tell me this, if the charge is $ 20.00, you pay that back plus $ 10. BUT, if the charge is $ 30, you lose $ 15, plus the $ 30. If it is the same amount of work to process a charge back, why should the processor get a bonus if the amount is higher? Shouldn't it be a flat rate, "Charge back fee is $ xx.00 ?? But no, because it's a money fuck and it's all set up to make as much money as they can on any type of charge or charge back.

It's all one big fucking money scam and webmasters pay for it all. That is how it's set up. Banks and processors don't lose a fucking penny. It's all set up to make money on any type of transaction made.

You keep singing the "higher risk" song, but again WHAT IS THE RISK?

There is no risk, it's a term shoved down adult webmaster's throats to extort millions of fees that are not justified and should be against the law.

High risk. I laugh at that term. The risk is IDENTICAL for a website selling baseballs.... but a guy selling baseballs online would NEVER pay an annual fee or believe in the term "high risk" ...but adult webmasters are morons thinking it's a legit charge and 'have to pay it" because, it's the cost of doing business.
OOOOHHH.. ADULT CONTENT IS SCARY AND HIGH RISK... OOOOH MY... GOTTA PAY A HIGHER FEE TO SELL IT.

And the first webmaster that agreed, started a chain reaction.

We let them get away with it so it is our dam fault. 14.5% and $ 1250 a year. MY GOD PEOPLE WAKE THE FUCK UP.

CCbill and the other adult processors are all fucking us royally in the ass for years, and we let them!!!

I'm not saying what this NewOldPlayer guy is saying is right since I have not worked in banking for a good while and in those days VC/MC use to shake things up quite often. However, risk always use to be determined by the percentage charged.

Example, a flower shop that took sales over the phone would have an agreement that had them pay 3.5% per sale (plus a transaction fee) while a jewellery store that only dealt with cardholder present transactions 1.5% (plus a transaction fee).

My point is, VC/MC never determined the risk factor of merchants; they had guidelines but the ultimate decision on risk fell on the acquiring bank.

If, and this is a big if, things still work the same, an IPSP will get a quote from their acquiring bank; let's say it is 6%. The IPSP then factors in their own costs and profit margins and come up with a figure of say 14.5% which is what they charge their end users.

Their acquiring bank should already have risk factored into the percentage and while I pay the VC/MC fees to 3 different processors and put it down as a cost of doing business, I am not totally convinced that this is a charge for being "high risk" as most people are pointing out.

Yes, and they great! They always pay on time and they are extremely
reliable!!!

I wish there is more billing companies like them....

Do you have a picture of yourself ? I am having a hard time imagining what this level of stupid looks like

Because there is higher risk with adult sites, b2c call centres, telemarketing, gaming, betting and other industries that fall into a High Risk MCC.

The risk is lower if you are selling a tangible product using a tightly controlled aggregator arrangement such as Paypal. I am not sure if Paypal themselves are considered a high risk PSP but even if they're not you can't compare Paypal to a Merchant Account.

Wrong, the responsibility for risk management falls with the merchant/acquirer. Visa have a stringent set of standards for risk management for acquirers and merchants, especially those of PSP's.

Have a read of this:

http://usa.visa.com/download/merchan...Guide_2010.pdf

You're wrong, it's not that simple and by saying it is you are demonstrating a complete lack of understanding of the nature of risk, the cost of managing it and how merchant/acquirer/region/network relationships work.

Educate yourself, read this guide for merchants on the subject of chargebacks

https://usa.visa.com/download/mercha...-merchants.pdf

then read the merchant's guide to risk management

https://usa.visa.com/download/mercha..._ecommerce.pdf

Nobody is making these fees up, in fact I would hazard a guess that at times through the dispute resolution process that companies like CCBill don't pass on the full economic cost of what they do. Remember there is manual work involved here that people on all sides of the equation often have to process through their various systems. If you were charged for the true economic cost of every dispute it would likely exceed the chargeback fee.

The risk has been explained to you in my previous post but I'll make it clearer - some merchant categories are known to be higher risk than others - every merchant category has a code, there are a bunch of these deemed to be high risk. As with everything concerning financial transactions, the greater the risk the greater the cost.

Typing in capitals and repeating yourself does not change the facts of the issue at hand. It just makes you look stupid and uneducated.

The market has a good way of sorting these things out, the market has settled on these costs and until market forces push down costs you'll just have to wear them.

Nobody is forcing you to use a PSP, you can go get your own merchant account and acquirer relationship if you want to. I suspect that it's probably not worthwhile to do so if you're worried about a few yearly fees though.

:2 cents::2 cents: Bingo :thumbsup

Ok, but WHAT IS THE RISK???

Everybody keeps saying the same thing... "it falls in a risk category" and "it's more riskier than selling baseballs" and "risk requires a higher rating."

I get it, but I'm still waiting for somebody to explain to me, WHAT is the RISK??

Why is it riskier to by an adult site VS. buying a baseball??

I would think the baseball is riskier because it relies on more steps, ie; shipping and receiving. So many things could go wrong, I would consider buying a baseball much more riskier than buying an adult site.

With the adult site, you get the product instantly and the transaction is complete. So where is the risk?

Can somebody explain this to me? Thank you.

I feel that everybody has been brainwashed over the years and programmed to believe their content is "high risk" so we just take the term and the higher rate as normal. But thru the years hasn't anybody asked, "what is the risk?" and gotten a real answer other than, "oh, it's high risk because it's adult content." Yeah, So?? WHERE AND WHAT IS THE FUCKING RISK??

In very simple terms VISA says it is high risk, Mastercard says it is high risk. The end. There is no conspiracy among billers. Their rules, (Visa/MC) them make them and change them whenever they want.

Sorry you cannot wrap your head around that.

There is the entire story. If next week Visa says selling Bibles is high risk, it is.

Thank you. That's my whole point.

There is no risk. Just because Visa and Mastercard "say" there is risk, doesn't mean there is risk.

The entire premise for 'adult billing' is based purely on greed, deception and theft.

If Visa and MC can't define "why' adult content is legally labeled risk, I think it's time to get a lawyer and sue them. These fucking credit card processors in adult are the lowest scum sucking online thieves ever. 14.5%, Rolling reserves and annual fees? Why do you and I put up with it? The rest of the free market gets hit with 3% and that's it. We have fucked ourselves by putting up with this all these years. Something has to be done.

Doesn't anybody know a lawyer that knows credit consumer law and wants to sue these bastards?

Or is everybody so used to sucking CCBill's cock and getting fucked by Epoch and all the rest that fighting Big Brother is a pointless thought? It would be an awesome and amazing lawsuit to sue thieves in a class action lawsuit and regain all of the money that was stolen from us thru the years.

Just because they are getting away with it doesn't make it legal.

You are certainly free to create your own multinational credit card company, you can then avoid any fees you want. Let us know how that goes.

You cry about what should and shouldn't be. Successful people focus on what is and use that to their advantage.

Piriod.

The risk lies in a spouse seeing the CC statement and finding out their husband/wife bought porn. Then the purchaser disputes it and calls his bank for a charge back. Not too many people will deny buying a baseball if their spouse sees the charge. But they will deny buying porn.

What I think sucks the most for adult site owners is that we are being flagged as taxpayers by Visa as high risk now and that information is being reported to the IRS. We have a special MORAL designation that, for honest business people offering good products, should never ever be attached to our federal identities. With Operation Choke Point and the FBI and IRS and banks working together to target people it's baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad. Or am I just being paranoid?

Really it's the big fuckers in this industry who've scammed customers with pre-checked cross-sales and total thievery and shady tactics who have gotten all of us painted with a brush of dishonesty / "high risk". And the totally ignorant puritanical anti-sex media-illiterate hysterical masses going along with all of the brainwashing telling us we need our sex lives and thoughts regulated.

It's sad that small site owners trying to create unique content that they love have to pay as much as corporate porn sites for this high risk designation. $1000 *is* a lot to indies -- too much for it to be worth it in many cases -- and as those folks go out of business and only mainstream cookie cutter porn survives it's now most people's only concept of what porn is/can be, and everybody thinks all of us pornographers are teaching the world that sex must include chargling and butt-ramming and forty-five minutes of desensitized balls-deep boredom.

The risk is a number of factors, here are some of them:

1. The card is not present when the transaction is made.
2. The card is processed over the Internet and stored for rebilling by the PSP
3. The MCC is one that has been shown over time to produce more fraud and abuse than other MCC's
4. The MCC is one that plays a greater than average chance in causing a card holder to default on the credit card.
5. A PSP is processing the transaction on behalf of a seller who is not a merchant.

These factors combined place certain business categories in a higher risk group.

See above.

Selling baseballs on the Internet can place you in high risk under some circumstances.

Selling baseballs via telemarketing would definitely place you in high risk.

You're missing the point entirely, it's not all to do with the content of what you are selling but they way in which you are selling it and the other factors that go into calculating risk associated with specific industry categories and the way transactions are processed.

See above.

I am sure you have not read the Visa guides I linked to in my previous post or you would already begin to have some understanding of the issues involved.

It's not just because it's adult content, it's also the way the transaction is conducted and who is conducting the transaction on both sides.

Telemarketing is also high risk, selling toasters or fry pans or steak knives.

owned :1orglaugh

Bump... how many hands in the cookie jar?

Post the visa/mastercard requirements. All of the stipulations and do not pick and choose what makes your argument look the best.

Then we will continue this debate.

Too early in the morning for me to Google, and I was not participating in any debate, I was stating a fact. Card associations charge a fee, they also determine what is high risk. The end.

What 3rd party processors do is up to them, some pass along the fees, some eat them, mayb e some mark them up, dunno.

But I am probably wrong, I only have 17 years and hundreds of adult merchant accounts to get my information from.

Amen to your point about how these developments have made the field less diverse and more cookie cutter and that is not a good thing.

Do you have a link for the IRS/bank/Visa thing? Doesn't the IRS just expect everyone to render unto Caesar?

Risk is determined by Visa & MasterCard by the number of charge backs and fraudulent claims in the industry. Adult has a much higher percentage of charge backs and fraud claims.

I am still waiting for someone to post that the solution is Bitcoin :)

The biggest thing is trust in this industry and that is why people are willing to pay 14% and ridiculous fees because they know what they are getting with consistency.

We are direct to CC Bill and can get you down to 10% instead of 14%. Additionally what we would do is offer you additional MIDs priced at 7%. We would use CC Bill to vette all new customers because they don't charge for chargebacks and then funnel them to the accounts at 7% after they have been screened. We can easily do this buy creating a customized solution for you at the gateway. Funding is 2-3 days but after a couple of months we can get you to next day funding. Let me know if this is of interest to you.

keep this for thanksgiving

Of course, Bitcoin is the solution, but most of these hot shots are going to miss out. GFY is like the Tea Party of porn.

Especially since it did not start THIS year with MasterCard...

My members can pay in bitcoin, litecoin, dogecoin:

https://gfy.com/showthread.php?t=1145606

Cool, but let me look... I still see Visa/Mastercard sales happening.

This fee can sometimes be negotiated down or even removed. If your provider can't or won't remove the fee, they may let you pay it monthly. Call your rep at and ask what the options are.

I work for a merchant processor and if you want to talk about a merchant account with good rates and stable contact me. We specialize in high risk accounts like adult sites. Email is [email protected] or Skype DanielKnapp179. We can negotiate the annual fee.