Dear people at GFY,
I totally understand your request for more transparency. Please
understand that VISA and MC wants to know who you are and which
websites you have.
They try to balance between all parties involved:
the merchant (who wants to get as much sales as possible), the
enduser (the customer of the credit card issuing banks - the one
that should not a chargeback), the IPSP (the one that stores credit
card data which entails a risk for the brand) and the actual content
that is sold (they don't want to have someone claiming 'for everything
else there is a MasterCard' - when incest content is illegally sold).
Now reduction of risk:
- Making sure that all merchants get registered and verified against
an internal blacklist, a list called MATCH, and several international law
enforcement agency lists.
Costs: US$ 500 for MasterCard annually
+ US$ 100 for annual verification with law enforcement agencies
Just google for 'mastercard payment facilitator' and you will find a
complete document with all global rules. The version of December 2011
still has the US$ 1000 annual fee. We got this down to US$ 500.
I guess a new version of this document will be released soon.
- Enduser risk. We provide customer support for your customers
where we have certain red flags when there is a sudden change
in number of support requests per website.
We take the costs of this from the margin we make on your
transaction processing.
- IPSP risk. We are fully PCI/DSS compliant. This ensure VISA and
MC that we do our outmost best to prevent any hacking of credit card
data. Cost: $ 400 per merchant per year.
We take the costs of this from the margin we make on your
transaction processing.
- Content risk. This is the costs for verifying weekly your content
with the rules and regulations of the credit card companies.
We are required by MC and VISA rules to outsource this to a
Web Crawler Agent like G2. Charge per merchant is approximately
US$ 350 per year.
The registration fees (US$ 600) and content risk fees (US$ 350)
are new. The fee of EUR 500 (appr. US$ 650) will offset these costs
a bit.
Of course our business entails many other costs: PSD compliance fees,
merchant support fees, internet connectivity and server fees, chargeback
fees, statement fees, refund fees, transaction fees, wire fees.
In the end it's all about volume. And we are happy we have a healthy
merchant base, a great team and a great future in California with our new
US office. This way we can even more supportive to you.
Hopefully this is transparent enough
Kind regards,
Verotel Merchant Services BV
Joost Zuurbier