$0 Trial Period and Then Recurring Charge?

Which payment processor?

[msafi]

I been looking for a payment processor that will let me offer a free trial period and then start a recurring monthly charge.

Would also be great if I can:

* accept credit cards issued from one country but used in another (the nature of my business for travelers requires this)
* accept credit cards from almost any country, like Serbia, Nigeria and others
* lower/disable fraud prevention measures

Could anyone please recommend a processor?

[ganderla]

disable fraud measures? Fishy, fishy

[msafi]

@ganderla,

Not the helpful reply I was hoping for, but I see your point.

The reason I'd like lower fraud prevention measures is because of my own experiences with them. I use my U.S. bank account to make purchases while traveling and I've suffered a lot from restrictive measures that served no good purpose. They only kept me from spending my own money and cost the would-be seller revenue.

Furthermore, I sell a digital subscription. If the buyer turns out to be a fraudster, I can simply disable their subscription and say good bye to them.

[londrum]

i went to australia once and used by debit card in a machine, got the money out perfectly okay, but when i went use it the next day it didnt work. when i phoned up my bank they told me they stopped my card because they assumed someone had nicked it.
so they stopped my card with absolutely no warning, simply because i used it abroad.
so i can understand msafi's point.

but on the other hand, i wouldn't want my customers to know that i was stripping out fraud prevention measures. because no matter what the reason behind it, it's just going to make you look bad.

[topr8]

the first two should be standard anyway with any merchant processor
with the third you can usually set your own fraud levels - however be aware that if you start getting a lot of chargebacks they may require a deposit.

i have a b&m store in a tourist district here in uk and often usa cards are blocked - because they are being used abroad, this is a card ISSUER rule and nothing to do with my card processor

[msafi]

Thanks for the replies, but I still don't know which processor I should sign up with.

I used PayPal for a period of time, but it doesn't meet ANY of the requirements in the original post. Then I switched to ClickBank, which was more flexible but still didn't meet some important requirements.

I'd really like to know what others are using for subscription sites that offer a free trial.

[rocknbil]

As I recall, Authorize.net and Netbilling both support free trial period subscriptions, and both allow you to enable or disable AVS; verified by Visa optional. Which is really the only anti-fraud you should disable. You can optionally disable CVC, but bad idea.

Both, however, require a bit of robust programming to set up correctly.

[msafi]

@rocknbil

Thanks for the recommendation. I'm comfortable using well-documented 3rd party API. I've used the API of Amazon, MailChimp, WordPress, PayPal and ClickBank in the past. I'll probably manage with Netbilling.

I'll check them out. Thanks again.

[msafi]

I tried to sign up for NetBilling but it seems that I'm required to have a registered U.S. based business.

Is it possible to get a merchant account (or something similar) with a U.S. checking account of an individual?

[jwolthuis]

The best recurring payments functionality that I've found is Payflow Pro (formerly from Verisign, now from PayPal).

Regarding the ability to accept CC's from Serbia and Nigeria... do those countries even have a legitimate CC infrastructure? Out of the 195 countries in the world, you only want to do eCommerce with 35-40 of them... and that number may be high.