GoFuckYourself.com - Adult Webmaster Forum - View Single Post - Membership and Product sales

NETbilling · 09-23-2004, 02:31 PM

Hello everyone,

Netbilling has been receiving an influx of calls, emails and ICQs about people wanting to setup their own merchant accounts for product sales and memberships because of recent events. While I am in no way discounting 3rd party processing, there are many misconceptions about the differences between 3rd party processing and processing through a payment gateway such as Netbilling. We very often refer merchants to CCbill and others when we cannot help them, as they do us.

This will surely clear some things up.

Netbilling charges only 1.5% and 15¢ per transaction or 45¢ flat rate (your choice depending on your average ticket) for credit card processing (in addition to the merchant account rates). Merchant account fees range from 2% to 7%, depending on what you are selling and where you are located, of course.

Our check processing costs only 3.25% and 40¢ per transaction with no merchant account required of course. We also have a 24/7 call center option which not only will handle your customer service but will provide complete inbound and outbound telemarketing services as well. Many merchant experienced in the past that if they had their own merchant account, they would need to provide their own processing interface, fraud scrubbing, and customer service. This is what got us started back in 1998. We wanted to provide all of those services for merchants with their own account without taking on the risk of third party processing. This makes our merchants very comfortable knowing that Netbilling is not at risk in losing their merchant account and going under as so many have over the past few years. If a merchant has problems and loses their account, it does not effect any of our other merchants in any way.

If you are a merchant selling adult or mainstream products and are located in the US, Netbilling can help you establish a merchant account and processing usually the SAME DAY! ***As a matter of fact, if you mention I said so when you contact us, we will waive our usual $199 setup fee and the $45 bank app fee. *** We also provide a complete free shopping cart system for credit card and ACH/check processing or you can use an existing cart system such as Miva, Oscommerce, X-cart and many others. If you are located offshore we can help with product sales as well. However, the processing rate is higher at the offshore bank.

For paysites, we can setup merchant accounts both domestically and offshore and the total startup cost is approximately $2k which includes the Visa and Mastercard high risk registration fees. There is no reg. fees for Discover, Amex or JCB.
For adult paysites setup time is approximately 2-4 weeks realistically by the time the bank and Visa approve the sites.
Please note: IT IS ABSOLUTELY OK TO PROCESS WITH A THIRD PARTY (IPSP) PROCESSOR AS A SPONSORED MERCHANT AND HAVE A MERCHANT ACCOUNT FOR THE SAME SITES, JUST AS IT IS OK TO HAVE THE SAME SITES REGISTERED WITH 2 IPSPS AT THE SAME TIME. We often get merchants that switch to us or use us as the primary processor over third party processors. While you start new sales and rebillings with Netbilling, you current customer will remain at your current IPSP unless they will release the customer data for import into our system.

The nice thing is, once you have your merchant account setup, you can use additional processors with the same merchant account without having to pay the Visa and Mastercard registration fees again, in case you want to setup a backup processor/gateway.

-----

If you are questioning whether you volume is high enough to justify your own merchant account... If you are processing more than $1000 per month, have a business DBA, LLC or corp, decent personal credit, and a business checking account, you are good to go. For offshore, you must have an EU corp. to work with one of our banks and have decent established monthly volume.
If not, we suggest using an IPSP (3rd party processor).

Advantages to having your own merchant account and using a gateway such as Netbilling include lower transaction fees (compared to 3rd party processing), same day payouts for domestic merchants and weekly for offshore. You will also typically get higher conversion ratios due to the fact that you can set the scrub levels for your own sites, and control over your customer's data with the ability to export all customer data to another processor (whch is a big deal in the current climate).

Disadvantages include the fact that you must do your own affiliate payouts (or use the payout service by affiliatetracking.net or another) and answer to chargeback retrieval requests.

If you do not keep your chargebacks under 1%, you stand the possibility of losing your merchant account, just as with using an IPSP.

Almost all outside affiliate programs work well with our system such as Affiliatetracking (Taboorevenue), X3, MPA3, NATS etc...

-----

Again, I am not discounting 3rd party processing in any way. Some of my good friends in this industry work for or own third party processing companies.

Not sure if we left anything out here. Questions or comments?

Thank you, Mitch Farber

09-23-2004, 02:31 PM
NETbilling Confirmed User Industry Role: Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: Huntington Beach, CA Posts: 8,582	Membership and Product sales - Should you have a merchant account? Hello everyone, Netbilling has been receiving an influx of calls, emails and ICQs about people wanting to setup their own merchant accounts for product sales and memberships because of recent events. While I am in no way discounting 3rd party processing, there are many misconceptions about the differences between 3rd party processing and processing through a payment gateway such as Netbilling. We very often refer merchants to CCbill and others when we cannot help them, as they do us. This will surely clear some things up. Netbilling charges only 1.5% and 15¢ per transaction or 45¢ flat rate (your choice depending on your average ticket) for credit card processing (in addition to the merchant account rates). Merchant account fees range from 2% to 7%, depending on what you are selling and where you are located, of course. Our check processing costs only 3.25% and 40¢ per transaction with no merchant account required of course. We also have a 24/7 call center option which not only will handle your customer service but will provide complete inbound and outbound telemarketing services as well. Many merchant experienced in the past that if they had their own merchant account, they would need to provide their own processing interface, fraud scrubbing, and customer service. This is what got us started back in 1998. We wanted to provide all of those services for merchants with their own account without taking on the risk of third party processing. This makes our merchants very comfortable knowing that Netbilling is not at risk in losing their merchant account and going under as so many have over the past few years. If a merchant has problems and loses their account, it does not effect any of our other merchants in any way. If you are a merchant selling adult or mainstream products and are located in the US, Netbilling can help you establish a merchant account and processing usually the SAME DAY! *As a matter of fact, if you mention I said so when you contact us, we will waive our usual $199 setup fee and the $45 bank app fee. * We also provide a complete free shopping cart system for credit card and ACH/check processing or you can use an existing cart system such as Miva, Oscommerce, X-cart and many others. If you are located offshore we can help with product sales as well. However, the processing rate is higher at the offshore bank. For paysites, we can setup merchant accounts both domestically and offshore and the total startup cost is approximately $2k which includes the Visa and Mastercard high risk registration fees. There is no reg. fees for Discover, Amex or JCB. For adult paysites setup time is approximately 2-4 weeks realistically by the time the bank and Visa approve the sites. Please note: IT IS ABSOLUTELY OK TO PROCESS WITH A THIRD PARTY (IPSP) PROCESSOR AS A SPONSORED MERCHANT AND HAVE A MERCHANT ACCOUNT FOR THE SAME SITES, JUST AS IT IS OK TO HAVE THE SAME SITES REGISTERED WITH 2 IPSPS AT THE SAME TIME. We often get merchants that switch to us or use us as the primary processor over third party processors. While you start new sales and rebillings with Netbilling, you current customer will remain at your current IPSP unless they will release the customer data for import into our system. The nice thing is, once you have your merchant account setup, you can use additional processors with the same merchant account without having to pay the Visa and Mastercard registration fees again, in case you want to setup a backup processor/gateway. ----- If you are questioning whether you volume is high enough to justify your own merchant account... If you are processing more than $1000 per month, have a business DBA, LLC or corp, decent personal credit, and a business checking account, you are good to go. For offshore, you must have an EU corp. to work with one of our banks and have decent established monthly volume. If not, we suggest using an IPSP (3rd party processor). Advantages to having your own merchant account and using a gateway such as Netbilling include lower transaction fees (compared to 3rd party processing), same day payouts for domestic merchants and weekly for offshore. You will also typically get higher conversion ratios due to the fact that you can set the scrub levels for your own sites, and control over your customer's data with the ability to export all customer data to another processor (whch is a big deal in the current climate). Disadvantages include the fact that you must do your own affiliate payouts (or use the payout service by affiliatetracking.net or another) and answer to chargeback retrieval requests. If you do not keep your chargebacks under 1%, you stand the possibility of losing your merchant account, just as with using an IPSP. Almost all outside affiliate programs work well with our system such as Affiliatetracking (Taboorevenue), X3, MPA3, NATS etc... ----- Again, I am not discounting 3rd party processing in any way. Some of my good friends in this industry work for or own third party processing companies. Not sure if we left anything out here. Questions or comments? Thank you, Mitch Farber __________________ Mitch Farber CEO - NETbilling, Inc. Email / Phone: 888-357-8166 / 661-252-2456 Transaction processing & 24/7 call center services with exceptional rates and flexibility, since 1998!