Visa Fee's Almost One Year On....

Well many of us will remember almost 1 year ago the changes made by Visa in respect of the fee's they implemented for adult companies to process for 'porn' payments and well, personally, i dont see that much has changed.

Many people were saying that the implementation of the new fee's were going to cripple many in the adult industry yet, all of the sponsors who were around when the fees were implemented are still around today.

So what do you guys think about this overall? Did it have a positive or negative effect on the industry? Personally, as i mentioned above, i dont think it changed much of anything apart from putting a longer time before new sites can be authorized to accept payments and of course, Visa becoming richer for every affiliate program that wants to process Visa payments.

Oh yeah, the reason i started this thread was that the due date for the Visa fee is about upon us here, so was wondering if anyone else is due to make teir yearly payment to their processor in the next month?

Regards,

Lee

i could have sworn we're coming up on two years. In fact i know we've already paid it twice to both ccbill and paycom.

It only seems like two years Joe ;)

Actually, how are processors handling the annual fee's for Visa renewals? Are any of them taking the payment out of our aquired funds or do they have to be sent in seperately?

Regards,

Lee

lets see, last year:
- verotel became verotel pro (with a $1500 rego fee) and verotel tickets club ($0 rego but terms that are insane)
- ibill had serious merchant account issues
- jettis got taken over by epoch
- probilling went under
- acpay went under
- globill went under
- psw went under (I think this was within the year)

You don't see that much has changed due to the impact of the new visa regulations?

cheers,
Luke

Chillihost.. I'm on Verotel Pro and don't pay a fee and have a 6.9% rate.

I was screwed by ProBilling and lost thousands. I went to them because the merchant account I was on was forced to close all agregate accounts.

I don't know what's worse.. the porn scam artists, the merchant scam artists or Visa! Either way they've all taken a big bite out of my income and I have no recourse.. what's that about? Isn't that illegal? Justice only works for those who can afford it.

We changed credit card processors when it happened, as they wanted $1,200 for Visa and $2,000 for Mastercard. When it was pointed out to them that Visa gets $500 and they get $250 of the $750 fee and charging an additional $700 was theft, the words "TMF" were used.

It's funny how several processors have charged the Mastercard fees but the majority don't. Mastercard gets $1,250 a year, btw.

Right now I have one backup processor based in the USA that doesn't charge the Visa fees and takes all major credit cards, and at times I swear they're better than all the others, even my merchant account.

How did this affect the industry? A lot of people don't take Visa and are missing out. Many use PayPal until their accounts are frozen. I think it affects sponsors -- many went under, many dropped their payouts.

How about webmasters? Have you seen fewer snake oil salesmen about? Wasn't that one of the things the VISA charge was supposed to achieve? Wasn't VISA saying too many webmasters were ripping people off and engaging in unfair practices? Or were they referring to billing companies?

Cheers
Dzinerbear

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Originally posted by Lee
It only seems like two years Joe ;)

Actually, how are processors handling the annual fee's for Visa renewals? Are any of them taking the payment out of our aquired funds or do they have to be sent in seperately?

Regards,

Lee

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the visa regs came into effect nov 2002. We've already paid renewals once already.

The processors just take the annual renewal fee right out of your weekly check. One of them (epoch or ccbill) can't remember which one - takes 6 increments out 6 checks.

To answer your question more specifically - anyone that can't afford 750 registration every year doesn't belong in the paysite business. Free sites, TGP, AVS or badpuppy contributor type models is what they should be doing. Generally those webmasters weren't running paysites anyway.

Now the 1% chargeback ratio I do think had a big impact on how some people did business. A lot of companies stopped buying cross sells and actually had to make original sites with quality content in order to keep customers and keep their chargeback ratios low. which was actually a good thing imo.

So, i don't think their was a big impact at all. Just another 'the sky is falling' hype. Perhaps Rand or Patrick can give us their thoughts.

I think we just all think of it as cost of doing business now.

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Originally posted by djdez
i could have sworn we're coming up on two years. In fact i know we've already paid it twice to both ccbill and paycom.

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you have to repay the $750 every year?

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Originally posted by Marc
you have to repay the $750 every year?

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You have to pay a renewal fee every year. I can't remember if the renewal is $350 or $750.