What the rubber duck is happening to Adult?

Last week i posted that Paymonde were on their way down. Now they are down and alot of people are owed alot of money.

This happened to me when i very first started with WebsiteBilling.com. They only had a couple of hundred and i moved on. Some programs are owed tens of thousands though. What do they do? What happens to the affiliates who are owed to?

My initial advice to one guy was to go for CCBill next time, but then look what happened to IBill? They were humungous.

I for one am worried. What happens if CCBill go down. Could my sponsors pay me? To be honest i dont think anyone i work with process though Paymonde so im lucky but i feel its time to start contacting the sponsors and asking to know their plan if the processor goes down the toilet. Are they putting in place stratagies like multi processing and spreading the sales out?

Maybe im over-reacting but seeing the stories of people loosing all their income has me worried. I want to quit the day job next year.

Imo we all need to start asking harder questions and be abit more prepared.

Thoughts?

I think it's just a gamble that you have to take in this business. I honestly could not pay affiliates if CCbill went out of business. I'm small-potatoes and don't have multiple processors to work with. So, if I don't get paid, you don't get paid. That's just a reality.

Some of the big programs may be able to pay at least some of what you're owed but I'm guessing that not a lot would. When Ibill went down, DeluxePass owed me a LOT of money (at least for me). They used several processors, so I did receive some payment. And they did eventually make all payments that were owed from Ibill but it took a long time.

This is the exact reason why we have our own merchant account and we also still use Paycom & CCBill. Even if we for some strange reason lost our merchant account we could move those to another merchant account or biller. We got bugged by IBill for the longest time to use them but we never did. I wouldn't worry about CCBill or Paycom they have been around so long and have proven they are 100% stable. But I think all sites should have 1-2 backup processors. Don't put all your eggs in one basket as the expression goes.

Mark

Thanks Mark, thats one my list to ask lol. Xstr8guy I apreciate your honestly, i dont promote uk naked men but i like that your honest enough to say that. Its kind of my point though. IBILL was massive and they went down, personally if i ran a paysite id be going multi processor. If CCBill close youve lost your business.

I've had some pretty in depth conversations with pretty senior people at both Paycom and CCBill.

I think that both companies are pretty conservative in everything they do, and honestly, for a processor to survive in this business environment, I think that's really the only way to be. While you'll see webmasters here bitching from time to time about the scrub or the decline rate or whatever, I am thankful that they have the staff and the knowledge to spot the sort of risky transactions that would be likely to cause chargebacks.

It's always possible that something will happen that will dramatically alter the landscape (Visa US decides to stop processing for adult, for example) but this industry has proven itself to be pretty resilient, and the money involved is so huge and the demand for the product so large that I would guess that anything that happens, someone will come up with a creative solution to make it work.

Who knows? Maybe if the Dems hadn't recaptured Congress, two years down the road we'd be processing in units of pork bellies instead of dollars, and the payment clearance house would be the commodities market instead of Visa. I never cease to be amazed with the creativity that comes out of people in the adult industry, and I suspect that one way or another, there will always be a solution. But forewarned is forearmed, and so having multiple processors, and multiple payment *methods* (not just Visa/Mastercard and not just US-based processors) is definitely a wise move to protect your revenue streams.

And i think for those of us who just work as affiliates, spreading the sales out with multiple programs (which is what i try to do) is a wise move. Sposnors can go under with little warning.

If VISA quit the Adult market we'd all go dialer. If Bush banned porn, id go foriegn langauge. I agree there will allways be options. I really think we need to start safeguarding more though, at least i need to.

something you have to keep in mind is that the processors who go under are breaking the rules - and they KNOW they are breaking the rules. ccbill and epoch do their best to be compliant - sure, something could happen, but they do everything they can to keep it from happening while the other processors just did whatever they wanted.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by basschick

something you have to keep in mind is that the processors who go under are breaking the rules - and they KNOW they are breaking the rules. ccbill and epoch do their best to be compliant - sure, something could happen, but they do everything they can to keep it from happening while the other processors just did whatever they wanted.

---

Very well said and very true. :)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by basschick

something you have to keep in mind is that the processors who go under are breaking the rules - and they KNOW they are breaking the rules. ccbill and epoch do their best to be compliant - sure, something could happen, but they do everything they can to keep it from happening while the other processors just did whatever they wanted.

---

Oh my god! It was so obvious but I had never really thought of it that way before. Lol. From now on, if a processor starts doing hinky shit... it's time to ditch them and move on!

hinky processor shit includes processing in the u.s. and not charging that $750 visa requires. visa really does require it, but a lot of companies try to get around it by putting a little office up in another country. every time, they eventually get caught and shut down, but they always think they have THE solution. there is a solution - if you're a u.s. company, don't try and spin off an eu company just to process high risk without a fee or all that paperwork.

verotel is an eu company and always was, btw. that's why they haven't been taken down - they're legit.

I think it's really just a risk of doing any kind of business. Large corporations occasionally go out of business and leave a mess behind them. Hazards of capitalism and all that.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by basschick

verotel is an eu company and always was, btw. that's why they haven't been taken down - they're legit.

---

And on that note, there are TON of big programs that use Verotel as backups, in their cascades, etc.
Just 'cause they don't charge any big upfront fees to set up, doesn't mean they are worth using, or any less legit. They've been around for while and seem to know what their doing.

Paymonde on the othr hand..well, when they switched from MyVirtualCard to Paymonde, and then moved banks to the Phillipines...to me, the writing was on the wall.


Dave.