Choosing A Payment Processing Option.

One of the most important aspects of running any type of membership site is ensuring that you get the right billing processor, whether you work with adult orientated content or non-adult content you want to make sure that the processor you choose is right for you and, that you are right for them.

With so many options available to webmasters these days, you need to know what to look for and, ask of your potential new payment provider so, lets take a look at several things you need to be checking before deciding who you want to use in order to process your online payments.

Third Party Processing

Third party payment processing, is one of the easiest types of billing service to get setup, in fact, third party processing is so simple to get started with that pretty much every affiliate program you can think of uses a third party processor in some shpe or form.

Payment Processing - What Do You Need To Know?

Before entering in to an agreement with any payment processor you might be wanting to use however, you need to make sure that you ask several questions and, that you understand the answers given to those questions by your billing provider, lets take a look at some of the basic information you need to know about your potentia payment processor below.

Most importantly of all, what is the processors setup fee?

This could be $0 or, it could be upwards of $1500 depending on the provider you choose, you need to make sure that you have the means to pay this setup fee and, that this fee includes processing of Visa, Mastercard and other major credit facilities.

What are the transaction fees?

In addition to setup fees, all processors will charge you an additional transaction fee, as with the setup fee's these change drastically from processor to processor and could be as low as 2% and as high as 25% in some instances :eek:

What, if any, other fees are there?

Finally, on the 'cost' front, some processors will actually charge you for returned payments, cutting checks, sending your funds by wire, etc, make sure you get a full disclosure of all fees associated with your processing account.

What type of products/services are payments processed for?

It might seem like a simple question however, many webmasters forget that a lot of 3rd party payment providers will only process for online digital transaction and not physical product, this could be a major problem if you are mailing out product to your customers.

What countries will they bill from?

Some processors have a list of 'banned' countries that is alost as long as their list of 'accepted' countries to process payments from. With this in mind, you need to make sure that the processor you are considering will bill customers globally, including U.S based customers!

How often will YOU get paid?

Another significant aspect you need to look at it how often your payment processor will send you your funds. Bear in mind that most processors will have a 'holdback' period, you need to ask how long this is also and, what percentage of your total transactions will be held-back.

How will you get paid?

Now that you know how often you will be getting paid, you need to find out how you are going to be paid, by check? By wire? By paypal?

Will they handle customer support for you?

Finally, once you actually have customers, will the payment provider handle all support related issues your customers may have? If so, you also need to ask if there is a fee associated with this.

Payment Processor Options Wrap-Up

Hopefully, this short list of questions that you need to ask any potential payment processor will be of some use to you, today or, in the future when you decide you want to start billing your own customers for content access. Only by making sure you know as much as possible about any potential payment processor you are looking at will you have all the information you need to make a solid business decision in choosing your billing provider.

Finally, one last thing that you need to do when looking at billing providers is to ask on various industry message boards, see if anyone else has had experience with a certain processor and, whether they are happy with the services they have received after all, even if all the answers to the questions above are the 'right' ones for you, if you stumble upon another iBill, the right answers arent going to be any good for your business.

Article written by Lee.

http://www.webmasterconsultants.com

You forgot to mention,, NO PAYPAL!

Nice article you have there.... very good insite!

Hi,

Another important consideration is how many other adult companies are using that billing provider. Many affiliates tend to promote a number of different adult sites, so to an affiliate it makes sense if these sites all use the same billing provider.

One reason this is useful is because it cuts down on their payout fees (especially if they are abroad and use wiretransfers).

Another reason many affiliates prefer better known billing providers is because they have a good track record on paying out on time to affiliates. Affiliates also prefer billing providers with good reputations.

Menatplay.com, our site, uses CCBill.com. They handle all the affiliate payouts themselves, and simply deduct the correct amounts from each sale, sending us the remainder. The joy with CCBill.com for affiliates is that they can sign up to many major sites who use CCBill.com, and manage all their affiliate relationships from one control panel.

Naturally there are other billing partners you can use, I just mentioned CCBill.com as they are the ones I have most experience with. My advice is to check out the big adult sites, and have a look to see what billing providers they are using.

Cheers

Andrew