Forum Moderators: buckworks
Anyway- I have no idea where to start. There are sooo many merchant account and gateway companies. Who do I go with? I'm running a dating site - does that matter? It seems some have gone with a place called JetPay because they offer fraud prevention services (important for online dating?) which keeps the charge backs low. Otherwise, people tell me to go with Authorize .net. And that's just for gateways. I don't even know where to begin for merchant accounts.
Any recommendations are greatly appreciated!
Thanks.
And that's where it gets even trickier - with the photos. What type of photos will you allow? You might check out the gateway 2000Charge.com to see if they can help you with a merchant account as well. They would help with some of the customer service issues also.
A third party would be CCBill. They might be able to support you as well.
-Corey
Well, its a pretty above board dating site - no nudity. In fact, the content is strictly regulated to keep the user base 'high quality'. I've been built a sophisticate spam/scam filter that does a whole bunch of stuff to weed out the people from Nigeria, Ghana, Russia etc. Even as a free site, I've got it down to 95% ligitimate signups (compared to 60% without the filter). I assume this helps with the chargback issues?
N
Unfortunately they will group you in the NAICS - not just your website.
-Corey
Also - gateways aside, can you recommend a good merchant account supplier? Does this part even matter or is it mainly the gateway I should be concerned with?
worldpay allow dating sites - they are a combined merchant account / gateway provider - an all in one solution
use their futurepay repeat billing system so you can automatically collect regular monthly payments
simple .....
I would not recommend a merchant account provider for this type of website. If you do want one, 2000charge.com will help you - but the volume needs to be high.
The reason I do not recommend a merchant account provider is because of the risks involved. if you have too many chargebacks or fraud, this will go against you and your account might be suspended or terminated. This might put you on the MATCH list. And then if you decide you would like another merchant account because you want to sell office products, you will run into difficulty
-Corey
A few more questions:
> "would not recommend a merchant account provider for this type of website."
I thought that was the only option. I thought you need a gateway to accept a credit card and a merchant account to have a place to put that money. So if you say not to have a merchant account then how would I accept payment? Note - I don't want to have to redirect to paypal or something; that looks very unprofessional. I want to be able to accept credit cards. Is there another way to do so (without a merchant account)?
> NAICS is the new "SIC".
Ok ... what is SIC?
> "NAICS for web hosting is 7372 "
Sorry, I don't understand. 7372 - is the visits per day or dollars per day or something?
Basically to accept credit cards - you need a merchant account with an electronic payment gateway or an IPSP. The IPSP has a merchant account and they allow you to process credit cards on their merchant account.
As far as looking unprofessional, it depends. Especially on membership based websites, I would disagree. I find it more interesting where membership based websites process on their own website. I sort of expect it but that also could be because I recommend it as above.
SIC is Standard Industry Code, replaced by NAICS which stands for North American Industry Classification System. This is just basically what businesses use to help identify each other.
I really don't know what more I could suggest. I have suggested 2000charge.com as a gateway and they would help you get set up with a merchant account. They might even be able to offer some type of IPSP system as well. Otherwise, CCBill. But having a merchant account for this type of business, I would not recommend it because of the potential for problems.
-Corey
So I've been looking into it and yes Paypal has a pretty attractive product - Payflow Pro. So I think i will try that. My one concern however is that most mainstream merchant accounts don't seem to want to deal with dating sites due to >2% chargeback rates. Paypal doesn't mention antyhing about acceptable chargeback rates. I wonder if im going to get shutdown by Paypal and have to find a whole new solution if my chargebacks go to high?
A lot is usually taken into consideration and your concern should be how to prevent them. If you are terminated because of too many chargebacks, you might be placed on the MATCH list. And then once on this list, it is very difficult to get another merchant account
-Corey
Yes the MATCH list issue is really freaking me out. On one hand Paypal has no obvious published policy about maximum chargeback levels and I've asked them explicitly about both this and the dating site issue and they've given me the green light. On the other hand, I know there are offshore companies (as you've mentioned) who specialize in higher risk companies and that would keep me off the MATCH list...but their charges are WAY higher in most cases. I mean like 300-500% higher!
Perhaps it is a smart move to start with a high risk merchant account and wait to establish my chargeback rates and optimize it down a bit and then transfer to a more mainstream account if I can keep it low?
-Corey
