Does anyone offer offline check/money order payment options?

[tomld2]

I offer check/money order payment options on my ecommerce sites and it seems the majority of orders (well probably 40-50%) are check orders, however MOST of these customers never actually send their payments. Maybe because they forget, are too lazy, or just want to play with our order system by ordering by check. I am wondering if I am losing sales by offering check payment option? Would more check customers order by credit card if no check option was possible?

What are your thoughts and experiences on this?

Thanks
Tom

[upside]

I have a site that accepts money orders in addition to credit cards but I do not accept checks. Check payments are risky even compared to credit card transactions because there is no dispute process for checks that can be reversed. The same goes for e-checks.

[tomld2]

Yea, but that's not the point of my question. My question was whether offering check payment (or any mailed in payment) reduces credit card payments and encourages fake order...

[upside]

You are going to get both fraudulent credit card payments and fraudulent check payments. You will probably get more fraud just by having another avenue that can be exploited by fraudsters.

As for whether offering check payment reduces credit card payments, that depends on how well your shopping carts interface is designed. I think that more payment options are generally a good thing. Just make sure that each payment option is readily available from any point of checkout.

[Tsuren]

tomld2, we have been using check payments.
The first of all: sometimes people send fraudulent checks as well. Level of fraud like that is about the same like we have with credit cards.
The second point: there is a way to accept checks by online but you will get higher level of fraud then you have it with credit cards.
The third point: people buy a lot of merchandizes just by occasion. He/Shi is in the consider mood then he/she purchase. Check is longer way. Customer has to find envelope, sign the check, print out invoice or fill out some order form... It takes time. Mood's gone.

Actually I recommend my clients to get rid of check order form. It should not be near credit cards.

Off topic

by the way, more then 50% of people, who were going to pay bu check, do not do it.

[edited by: DaveAtIFG at 8:51 pm (utc) on Sep. 4, 2004]

[abertone]

We only offer money order to orders from international orders, since we can't do an AVS match on those credit card transactions. We have the same 50% statistic of receiving the payment.

I have avoided offering this as an option to our US based customers for fear of losing the sale. We find customers that want to purchase with check or money order will call. In that case, we offer our address and tell them to print the cart screen before entering their card and they can mail it in with a money order.

-Andrea

[Phillyrich]

I would go with an ACH product, that way the customer enters the information and you bill his account. Unlike Credit Cards you can wait to make sure that the funds are available before you ship the product.

[digitalv]

I would go with an ACH product, that way the customer enters the information and you bill his account. Unlike Credit Cards you can wait to make sure that the funds are available before you ship the product

Be careful - it's not only easier to steal people's checking account information than credit cards, but it takes longer to dispute. Your merchandise can be well on its way by the time the owner of the account realizes the error. And since checking account disputes can take up to two weeks, the fraudster probably already has their merchandise.

Since all you need is the checking account number and routing number, people can buy products online using information off of anyone's check. Say the person worked for McDonalds or Wal-Mart or some other big company - if they went on your site and entered the routing/account number off of their paycheck it would most certainly clear the bank, but how long would it take before McDonalds or Wal-Mart even NOTICED the transaction?

I did online checks a long time ago and haven't done it in years. Never will.

[Faith]

tomld2, we offer cheque payments on our site and get the same problem with people not sending in their payments. I reckon that only about 40% of them every pay, but we have never experienced fraud from the cheuqe payments sent in.

We moved the cheque payment option to last from the bottom and it's helped a bit, I think some people choose cheque payment by accident!

We toyed with the idea of removing the option from our site but haven't yet made a firm decision because some people do prefer that method of payment for their own personal reasons.

It's a tricky one isn't it?