End of Rebills, Verified by Visa (VbV) ?
 

After doing some research, I haven't been able to come to any conclusions on how Visa is going to do the VbV for merchants will rebills. Anyone know anything? When will it go into effect?

http://usa.visa.com/personal/secure_..._it_works.html

If you ask me, it sounds like the end of rebills, but who knows.

I think March 2004 is supposed to be a big date regarding this...?

Merchants in certain high risk categories of busi-ness, such as adult entertainment and gaming may not be covered (however each card brand may dif-fer in this area and merchants are advised to con-sult card association rules for details

It's a good question.

Like yourself, I've heard all sorts of answers from all sorts of people. I don't know what to think.

I'd like to hear from Epoch or CCBill on this topic.

Not covered in what way?

Rebills are not just adult and are very convenient for the buyer also. I get rebilled monthly for:

- Servers in 3 data centers
- Usenet server
- Cable TV
- Membership at a drivers site

...

:2 cents:

True, BUT we are HIGH-RISK merchants, they aren't. I have a feeling we are going to be targeted -BIGTIME.

How many of those are tagged as "high risk" (adult) merchant accounts?

I think they will be treated differently.

I speculate that adult transactions will still be allow to rebill in the future, but the VxV system will email your customers MONTHLY, BEFORE EACH REBILL requesting that either they:

A) Go to url blah & enter their code TO PREVENT THE REBILL &/OR CANCEL THE SERVICE

or

B) Go to url blah & enter the code monthly to ALLOW THE REBILL(s) monthly.


I see this possibly happening for high-risk (adult) status accounts anyway.

See.. if VxV did what I said above... it could wind up being a good for the LEGITIMATE adult webmasters.

A lot of webmasters don't provide access to anything near what they claim.

The days of making your money off of a members area with 10 photosets and 100 links to other adult websites will of course be over.... because people just wouldn't allow that trash to rebill.


But people like Quiet for instance who have massive amounts of content (just like he claims in his site tours! imagine that!) -- I think it could wind up being a very good thing for sites like this..

VbV is a bitch. I work for Visa and my bank just started offering VbV. We get hundreds of calls from idiots who have trouble registering.

As for the theory about VbV emailing before rebills: the VbV system doesn't ask for your email address.

Why? All they do is continue to 'perpetuate the lie that 3rd party processors are necessary' (quote from someone I know).

Whether 3rd party processors are or aren't necessary isn't the issue here. They have more knowledge of the processing industry than anyone else here, that's why I'd like to hear from them.

I agree. Some comments or opinions from 3rd parties to shed some light would be nice.

Sometimes with things like this I am willing to bet the processing companies would know nothing more than we would if a little time is taken to research the subject.

I have heard both that high risk accounts will make use of VbV and that high risk accounts wont make use of it.

A response from a processor would help to get an idea on what's going on.

If high risk accounts are included overall would be great news for the adult industry with a first glance.

Intersting. But see, some of us think that Visa is going to make VbV for high-risk tougher. It's going to be an interesting time if they make something required from the consumer before a rebill is billed.

Epoch is a VbV certified IPSP. We know the VbV system very well. We currently have this in production on a portion of our transactions. The VbV system currently provides 1st chargeback protection only on US transactions. The VbV system will not block 1st chargebacks on foreign transactions at this time for US merchants. We are expecting this protection in the future.

The problem with VbV and recurring billing is that VISA only allows chargeback protection on the first transaction. All subsequent billings ARE NOT protected even though the first transaction was authenticated. When VbV first came out VISA would not alllow any merchant doing recurring billing to submit VbV on any transaction associated with recurring billing, if you did so you were subject to penalties. At least now we can get some protection. The problem is most webmasters run a trial type membership in which we get protection on the low risk trial but have no protection on the high risk conversion transaction.

Hope this helps...


Clay
EPOCH

Hi,

First charge protection is a good thing because it will help eliminate many of the "I did not do it" disputes which we call "Friendly fraud". However, VbV is not being pushed onto the consumer by the issuiung banks or Visa itself (besides a few commercials). VbV is a pain in the ass for the consumer to register for and most of the companies that have tried it have opted out because of consumer confusion and order abandonment. Hopefully the process will become easier for the consumer and required by the card associations.

Mitch

So with chargeback protection on the first transaction, most cases of friendly fraud are eliminated, like netbilling said.

Although subsequent transactions aren't guranteed against chargebacks, chargebacks will be significantly lower for those charges, as the "I didn't do it" scheme will be hard to pull off.

Keep in mind that there are still plenty of valid chargeback reasons even for the first transaction. VbV only protects against "I didn't do it" chargebacks. Forexample, "Merchandise not as described" will still be a valid chargeback reason. So you better make sure your site has what your tour/ads claim.