'AC Pay' ???
 

Post 1 of 2...

OK, Im Looking at using 'AC Pay'...

AC PAY

Anyone got any specific thoughts, or opinions, or horror stories, or well...
Basically, is there anything you think that I might need to know ???

Good or BAD ?
Either way, I appriciate your opinions...

Thanks Guys :)

'ThatGuyBeingCautiousInTheCorner'

I think AC Pay has a really, really, really cool logo.

As for using them, I'm not too sure. I have a friend that is going to open a site in a week or two who will use them for his processing. He seems to like them so I guess that's a plus.

Changed over from CCBill to AC Pay recently, due to regional processing restrictions.

Easy set up.
Good support.
Good reseller/affiliate system.

In the last month or so at CCBill, my declines were getting ridiculous.

So far, not one decline at AC Pay - fickin' unbelievable!

:thumbsup

Easy setup. Good affiliate stuff. Hard to pre-fill fields. Poor postback functionality.

I'm setting up acpay as my secondary after probilling

Can you elaborate on the poor postback? What makes it bad.

They only process VISA and MASTERCARD.

forget about jcb, discover, checks, web900, etc...


I'm moving from ibill to acpay now. don't know the problem yet. Good support, fast respond.

Iam actually using acpay as opposed to 'switching soon'. Here are my experiences :

1) Would be interested to see how the previous poster has any idea what his declines are. AC Pay currently DOES NOT show any decline info. The answer I keep getting is the famous ac pay 'its coming soon'. Even after requesting the decline info to be retrieved manually for a certain day or asking for the decline info for particular customer ids is NOT POSSIBLE. Here is a quote from an icq conversation with them : "We've had some declines today (unfortunately, I don't know which sites).....".

2) Postback issues. The postback issues being the fact that they dont postback! They just dont do it. They send emails instead (for like a new sale or a rebill success) which is very unreliable and difficult to import into any db. They are I guess adding the ability to pass 3 user defined variables that will be posted back which is a step in the right direction IMO, but only the user/pass is posted to your control script unless you pass custom user defined vars (not sure if thats live yet). About posting on rebills , I was told that it would slow the rebill script down too much and that there arent any plans on implementing that in the future.

3) Anything other than Visa/MC is in the 'coming soon' list.

4) I personally think that Visa International is going to follow suit andimplement a fee in the same way Visa US has. Even from talking to them they seem to have it it the back of there minds too that at some point they may be stuck with some type of fees / visa approvals as well.

5) In my experience a very poor join button click to approval ratio (but hey its all speculation when they dont provide you with decline info).

Bottom Line:
Good : They do pay you and most of the people there are very nice and easy to work with. For a webmaster who needs no custom 'features' and wants to run there paysite like an avs is probaly perfect.

Bad : Postback non-existent. No decline info. Everything seems to be 'coming soon'. Is like running a paysite in an avs system (affiliate program is setup to push all the sites in the ac pay system). It just all in all seems like a beta billing program that is modifying things as they come up.

Hope that helps.

Rory
:helpme

See what Rory said above. My experience is this:

They post back to their own script, which is cgi. It is possible for me to edit their cgi script so as to post to my own (php) script as well, but it's clearly a hassle to set that up.

They offered for me to give them a url to my own postback script, but then the only postback would be for new sales (i.e. not rebills or cancellations).

I do belive they are in the process of improving this situation, and they do seem to have a better affiliate setup than probilling (who are re-doing theirs now).

I rewrote the ac pay postback script in php, shoot me an email if you want me to send it over to you (rory at newoutbreakmedia.com). The problem is not that its difficult to setup , its the fact that they arent posting back enough data. Currently they only post the username and encrypted password , so its not a matter of manipulating the data, the data just isnt there.

Rory
:helpme

AC Pay is excellant IMO. We've gotten more approvals than ccbill/epoch easily.

They just updated the postback info, they can now send all user info, affiliate codes, and custom codes. I'm not sure if they posted it yet, but ask for the pdf manual.

I 2nd that

Take the time and read my post.

The fact that neither of you seem concerned that you dont have access to your decline info says alot.

AC Pay is great for a stock out of the box paysite and affiliate program. However it is at this time difficult to do anything other than the stock factory settings out of the box paysite/program. With your affiliate program , the only thing you know about your affiliates is there name and 1 url they choose to enter in the form. That is fine for most people, however what if you would like to offer your affiliates 'custom' features like being able to offer trials or turn pop ups on or off, etc. How would you do that with the AC Pay system?

As I mentioned earlier iam aware that ac pay now offers the ability to post some custom data to there form that will be passed through, but without the rebill or trial conversion post backs isnt that data irrelevant? I mean bravo for stats freaks I can pass through ips and reseller ids, even browser referer data , but after that initial sale all that info is gone. That doesnt seem to be a postback issue to you? Place your left hand behind your head and thrust it at your monitor numerous times. Read again.

Rory
:helpme

Which billers do allow access to decline info?

Jettis, Epoch, ......

IMO if a webmaster asks about decline info there should be no reason not to provide it. Several systems that I know of have automated systems that provide the decline info , some are delayed but bottom line its available, especially if requested.

Rory
:helpme

I hear ProBilling now has zero declines :1orglaugh

store and associate the data -> username

if username/password still in passwd file after username should have expired, then rebill/trial conversion succeeded, no?

a fun little hack ;) but acpay should spend a few minutes on this imho.

Probilling posts back all the stuff (i.e. reason, name, address, passwd etc.) for declines too.

At least probilling was honest enuff to let everyone know when they went down. How many times have you heard ccbill or ibill admit to an unscheduled outage. And how do you deal with scheduled ones?
No offense, I just think it's a bit unfair to critizise a processor for having an outage when they all do it.
The botom line is that everyone should have a backup processor. I am one of your (small, but still) resellers. I wouldn't mind at all if you set up a backup as well. Why lose sales?

Well according to AC Pay, since they try the transaction through several times, that it could be up to 6 days before you are sure that user is not going to get approved. Also I have no idea what timeframe they go on either ..... here is one of my members through AC Pay :

Nov 03 2002 10:00AM Signed up for 3 day trial at $1.95
Nov 08 2002 02:22PM (Rebill Script) Member was disabled by rebill script.
Nov 08 2002 02:22PM (Rebill Script) Member XXXX was removed from client site via PostBack.
Nov 08 2002 05:28PM (Cancel Membership Script) Customer initiated membership cancellation

Total charges : $1.95

When I asked about this this is the response I got back :
"We actually give them 3 full days, so it often winds up being more like a 3.5 or 3.7 day trial--if you claim "3 day trial" and they get less than 72 hours, they can complain"

But it actually ended up more than a 3 day trial ... as you can see. Iam all for avoiding chargebacks but IMO doubling the trial period is a bit much. Maybe this is a special crcumstance and something happened..... problem being is that AC Pay is not giving me access to info on the 'special circumstance' (if thats indeed what this is), so I have no idea what is going on.

IMO AC Pay right now is having a hard time differentiating between avs sites and paysites. If they dont wanna provide this info to there avs webmasters thats fine, however these are my customers iam sending to them for proccessing. I would like to be able to determine how long my trial period is , shit like that was honestly what has pushed me away.

Rory
:helpme