It's all about integrity. That's all Visa demands. Live up to your claims, and offer value to your customer.

No website in the world who operates an honest system is going to exceed Visa's chargeback ratio, under it's current rules. The bigger pps programs spend more resources on fighting affiliate fraud than consumer fraud. When webmasters wake up and realize that they are causing (and enabling) their own problems, then maybe this industry can be strong again.

Quit trying to fight Visa by reinventing the wheel. If you truly wish to embrace new payment options, then think outside of the box. 123bill is an amazing example of such vision and comes packaged with the integrity that is so dearly needed around here.

Agreed. If you're one of us that have a hard-merchant account (a machine in my office to take transactions for my computer business) you know that Discover and AmEX also take longer than Visa & Mastercard to process and payout. Their take is higher too.

I have 3 cards, two are straight up Visa, the other is a bank Debit card (also Visa). I'm with steffie - i will most likely never apply for another card again. Got too many already...

Interestingly enough, Discover's discount rate is much less than Visa, Mastercard and American Express. American Express is the highest of the bunch at upwards of 1% above Visa and Mastercard.. This, based on experience with my own merchant accounts.

I'm not likely to ever want or need any more credit cards either. That's part of the reason I think 123Bill is a viable option, because it ultimately generates a bill in the mail with an automatic net 30 for the consumer.

Brad

Visa's stance on AVS is simple, they do not want their product used as an age verification process. If you've read any of their releases or their statements, they are all about protecting their brand image.

Now, should I spam ePassporte in this thread or not, I wonder...

Im only taking pesos from now on.. Its a top secret visa loophole!

VISA suck :ak47:

Trying to fight visa is a losing battle but there's nothing wrong with looking at alternative methods in addition to visa and mc. It's important to offer your customers options. We've had a ton of great response since we added 123Bill to our sign up forms! :2 cents:

You may also want to look at Duocash as an additional way to process transactions along with your credit card processor.

We enable pre-paid phone cards to be used, which means that we have nothing to do with VISA/MC and we are not subject to their regulations.

We are not looking to be a replacement for credit cards, but rather an anonymous, additional method to get customers who might otherwise not want, or be able, to give CC# to adult sites.
Our system also works very well for micropayments as there is no per transaction fee of 15 to 50 cents like CC transactions.

Perhaps you may want to take a look at Duocash

http://merchant.duocash.com/howto.jsp

We are putting together some VERY large deals that will be implemented in the next 60 days or so that will put us all over the US and Canada, and we are in discussions to expand to Australia and the EU.

We are not in the business of selling phone cards. The problem with earlier business models has been distribution of proprietary cards. The retailers won?t stock the cards if the customers aren?t asking for them. The consumers aren?t aware of the cards if they aren?t on retailers shelves. It?s a chicken and egg type of issue.

In our case, we have done something different. We are taking a product that is ALREADY on the shelves, in distribution online, and in call centers. We are enabling the existing phone cards that are already on the market and being distributed, to be used by consumers to purchase digital content on the internet. This also avoids the issue of a single-use card that won?t be carried by retailers and distributors because of perception problems associated with a card that is specific to adult, gaming, etc?

You can contact me on my mobile or my email at any time for any questions you might have.

:1orglaugh :1orglaugh :1orglaugh

Nah... Let someone do it for you!

ePassporte is an excellent option! http://www.epassporte.com

Cheers,

Brad

How are you getting cards in the users hands?

EDIT: 50 Visa Rules

I'm all for alternative billing solutions.

IMHO, options like Duocash, etc boil down to found money!
So why not deploy an alternative method?

As I said in my post, we currently have three ways to get the cards to the customer

One, Physical:

We are right now in about 3k stores in the US. We will be in about 11k stores in the US and Canada by the end of the summer. This will basically put us within about 15 minutes of almost every consumer in North America.

Two, Online:

We have two online partners that are distibuting virtual cards, (it will be three by the end of this week). You would be surprised at how many people that will not entrust their CC info to an adult site, WILL be willing to give that info to a pre-paid telcom site.

Three, Phone:

We have a call center partner that is selling the cards over the phone right now.

All good stuff! I'd still like to hear from the original guy that started this thread in response to my posts.

Brad

Doesn't doucash have a signup fee? Around 1500$ or so...

:)

Sorry, didn't see this question until now. Actually, we have waived all set up fees for the time being, so putting Duocash on your site is a NO LOSE situation. The worst thing that could happen is that you don't see any increased revenues and you have spent 2 hours settting it up.

Hmm... Which one should I answer?..

Yes.
Agreed.

Cyberxxx, I guess I was hoping you would address my original concerns about your web site being incomplete, etc and not appearing ready to do business. No harm intended, I just felt that you should clear some of these things up if you want people to seriously consider your alternative.

Brad

Actually I have no relation to DSMcard - the site mentioned in the article :) It is NOT a my site.

My apologies, that was the impression I had. Perhaps if you know the owner you could have him come visit this thread.

Brad

A point to ponder:
I understand what you and Aaron are saying (and I'm not saying the alternatives discussed here are fantastic) but personally I do NOT like Visa telling me what kind of content I can and cannot produce and sell. I do NOT like Visa telling us that chicks can stick baseball bats up there twats but we're not allowed to depict ourselves being sexual when we're on the rag or when it is and isn't okay to include piss in sex play, etc.

Hey, I know other people are just in this biz for the money, and could care less about portraying honest sexuality or challenging fucked up misogynistic stereotypes -- but how can we have five billion images of facials . . . and never once show a chick with a bloody twat? That's ridiculous.

The period thing is just an example -- I don't have a problem with the chargeback ratios or anything like that, and I believe I run my sites with an above-standard level of integrity. I just don't think it's cool for Visa to discriminate against sites that shows women being sexual during all four weeks of the month, but it's cool to process payments for bukkake and all that bullshit.

So for now, I'll go with verotel for my "disgusting" period content.:
http://bloodytrixie.com The period thing is just an example, and yeah . . . I know most people have no interest in this content and are happy sticking with tried and true niches like the tiresome bogus "reality" sites.

Again, I agree that an above-board operation has nothing to worry about with chargebacks, etc. Just wondered if anyone was giving the issue of free speech any thought whatsoever.

What info do you need to get set up?

We've given quite a bit of thought to free speech issues.. I believe they're very much the center of many of today's issues. Come talk to us about your site :thumbsup

Cheers,

Brad

I still have the playboy one you guys sent out. Sucks when you're drunk and give it to the old waitress at Ihop by accident.
:glugglug