50........

That is really nice to say Brett - Thanks alot man.

See you next week!

Mitch

:smilie_we

If the friendly competition weren't so much fun, I'd be all for it :)

You are cool Kimmy... see you in SD?

Mitch

Good luck... There is a reason Epoch and CCbill are there... and in a month or two, you will find it out.

from the posts, looks like there is a reason Netbilling.com is there also :)

thats correct, some people dont have good enough credit to get merchant accounts :)

I know some people were born with the mental capacity of an ant but try to understand this.

The reason IPSPs were so popular is because they handled customer service, but more importantly they charged your customers under THEIR merchant account. Because of this chargebacks only mattered for the IPSPs entire network. They also ran the risk of being fined instead of the webmaster.

IT'S NOT FUCKING LIKE THAT ANYMORE. You are responsible for your own damn chargebacks now and the nice pretty fines anyone wants to send come to YOU. In short, you are giving a way a huge ass chunk of your income for NOTHING. From what I understand netbilling even does customer support? I can't think of one good reason to use a 3rd party if that is the case.

All I can say is AMEN!

yes netbilling does do cust support, both phone and email.
Even using their cust support its still cheaper over all then the percentage that 3rd party charges.

the only reasons I can think to use 3rd party is if you cannot get a merchant account due to bad credit or you dont plan on staying in business long or you want to use their affiliate program for what ever reasons. I am sure there are other reasons because someone just does not want to which is the best reason in my opinion.

The entire industry is changing and soon any large programs that don't have a merchant account will realize they are shooting themselves in the foot. If given the option, I think very few mainstream business owners would opt to allow a middle man handle their finances for as large a percentage as the IPSP's are taking.

At one time I could understand merchants being 'afraid' of taking on their own merchant account but times have changed and so have the options. The fact is that now days? a large number of banks are outsourcing their high-risk portfolios to risk management companies who underwrite the merchant accounts. (BTW some of these companies are often referred to the bank by V/MC.) The reasoning is obvious, those companies specialize in handling risk and keeping it under control. The card associations see a certain bank is having a difficult time overseeing cb ratios etc and offer them a complete risk management solution. The bank still makes its money but without the full risk.

Then there are the banks that do things the normal way, they underwrite the merchant account and leave the management strictly to the vendors. But this brings up the other solutions that have already been brought forward in this thread. Get a merchant account then bring on a solution such as Mitch pointed out with the customer call center etc., you will still save money in most cases.

Sure there is paperwork involved but I'd have to ask if a one-time occurrence of paperwork isn't worth saving your company 5 or 10% everyday? I remember the day I first announced a 4% merchant account solution ? heck the thread was wild with webmasters not believing the numbers lol. Anyone that takes a few minutes to ask me questions will find that depending on the type of adult product/service, location of the company and past transaction history, there are several solutions available for much lower rates than you would have previously thought. And that isn't even touching on the fact that there are even solutions available that don't have holdbacks or rolling reserves.

In summation, the savings can be substantial, the risk management options are easily available and you control your money instead of a middleman ... all these reasons add up to taking a moment to reassess a serious business model IMHO

I forgot to mention that alot of the high volume merchants use several merchant accounts to load balance anything from site groups to cb ratios.

As with any good business model, its best to never put all your eggs in one basket. If you have the volume, spread it around to different banks.

What caused these large programs to finally realize that this was the thing they should of done in the first place.

tony

I think its a combination of several things:
- The realization that they can increase their profit margins significantly by doing nothing more than switching their processing over to a merchant account
- word of mouth about how well its working for others that have made the switch
- they've been made to control their own cb ratios even by the 3rd party processors so they realize it CAN be done.
- the knowledge that there are risk management and/or customer support options available to help them if need be.

at least thats the kind of feedback I've been getting from clients

Good Luck with that, I am sure it's not easy. I'd be interested in hearing how things are going by Internext.

What's not easy? The setup is a bunch of paperwork ut we have been running with our own merchant account and Netbilling for a long tme now and it is very easy.

Good luck, guys.

All true words. BTW - we are always looking for more merchant accounts. Do you have any domestic banks besides Merrick and Humboldt who we already have accounts with?