Paypal buys Verisign

[tombarr]

Paypal (an ebay company) and Verisign have signed an agreement where paypal will acquire Verisign...

This potentially could spell trouble for adult companies using Verisign's secure payment gateways. PayPal, as you already know, does not allow adult payments on it's network. Trouble could be in the works if they apply this same rule to the Verisign processing arena as well.

I know we use 3 verisign gateway accounts. Anyone else using them?

We already got asked to leave Authorize.net a few years ago because they changed their policy towards adult transactions. Where to go next?


http://today.reuters.com/business/ne...-PAYPAL-DC.XML

[Chilihost]

Who are you using for a payment gateway for an adult site that uses verisign? Maybe you should get in touch with Mitch from netbilling asap and make a switch before paypal-verisign does a change in policy and forces you to shut down.

good luck,
Luke

[tombarr]

These are our own merchant accounts and they are for retail sites. The question posed was for the thought provocation. We already have a backup ready. I'm not running IBill here you know!

[gaybucks_chip]

I know that eprocessingnetwork.com is (or at least, has historically been) adult-friendly and has an authorize.net compatibility mode, so any shopping cart or windows-based application that is compatible with authorize.net should work seamlessly with eprocessingnetwork.

There are some other off-brand gateways that are adult friendly as well but the names of them aren't coming to mind at the moment. One is in Australia and another in Germany, and I think there are a couple more small companies in the US.

[tombarr]

Who are you using for a payment gateway for an adult site that uses verisign? Maybe you should get in touch with Mitch from netbilling asap and make a switch before paypal-verisign does a change in policy and forces you to shut down.

good luck,
Luke

Oh, forgot to answer.. Verisign is the gateway. I am not talking merchant accounts.

additional thoughts. Wonder how this will also play out with the secure certs that Verisign provides. Wonder if they are going to change their acceptable use policy for secure certs to forbid adult oriented sites....that will drive all those certs to other providers but that's not a tough issue, just another loss of revenue for verisign if they do that.

I saw the way they did revenue projections on the deal looking forward to the two year point and averaging the assumed revenue at that point.....

Kind of makes me wonder if anyone in the evaluation process stopped and inquired as to how much of the revenue from Verisign services was derived from adult websites, both from gateway fees and secure certs, not to mention the other services verisign provides that adult sites use..

[Lee]

This is definately going to be interesting to see how this is going to effect the industry as a whole, an awfull lot of sites may find themseleves scrambling if they are suddenly told they cant use Verisign for adult related stuff.

Regards,

Lee

[tombarr]

Does anyone remember why PayPal dropped adult processing? Parent company ebay has no problem with processing adult auctions...

[steven619]

Yup...this will be fun.
Where is the gay mofia when you need them?

We have a devision that is a reseller with PayFlowPro/Verisign and have a few hundred users with the. So..I was on the phone with our wholesaler the moment we found out.

1) The "merger" is only with the gateway.
2) PayPay/Ebay only purchased them because they FAILD with their own gateway.
3) The SSL business and of course their Thawte SSL division will remain the same.
4) Gateways are pretty Merchant Nutrual and can be used with a lot of Merchant Account.

Although I panic like everyone else I had the feeling that at least for the next 12 months NOTHING will change. We will continue to use and offer Pay Flow Pro and adult sites will be able to use them. It's only about the 12 merger I have seen this year and I'm very jumpy when I hear anything like this.

With that said...We are looking for a backup Gateway and think we have found one that we will be able to offer anyone that needs it. They have been processing adult business for years and it a private owned system. I'll keep everyone posted as I start to work out a program with them.

If anyone is interested we offer Pay Flow Pro for only $35 a month including the first 1000 transactions each month. No signup fee till the end of October. If you are interested drop me a note.

Steven

[Titanmen]

We had the same issue with Authorize.net a while back as well. If you have your own merchant account and only need a gateway you might try www.USAepay.com. They have done a good job for us.

I would definately start looking to move your gateway if Paypal is going to take over. As we all know PayPal does whatever the hell they want whenever they feel like it! I would be nervous with PayPal taking over Verisign.

[tombarr]

We are adopting a wait and see attitude at this point..no sense upsetting the apple cart just yet...and see how they react, however we do have backup plans in place just in case..which I believe would be wise for anyone that uses a verisign gateway....