Quote Originally Posted by Xstr8guy View Post
But this new, improved Epoch is a real pleasant surprise. How long will it be before we hear CCbill is teaming up with TooMuchMedia and implementing NATS?
I agree, I don't think Epoch could have made a more brilliant move. Given the arrogance of the people at TooMuchMedia, I would be somewhat surprised if they would enter a deal with CCBill, but the MPA deal might force the hands of both TMM and CCBill.

THe one thing that is of concern to us about getting our cascading billing through one billing provider (who is always in first position) is (depending on how it is actually implemented) it erases much of the reason for having multiple billers. As it stands now, if Epoch's scrub is too high, or they are lagging in processing time for some reason, it's a snap to change the cascade so CCBill is in first position. (Or, if you didn't like CCBill for some reason, Verotel or SegPay or somebody else.) As I understand it, this will not be possible with the Epoch version of MPA.

Likewise, in the unlikely event that Epoch runs into problems, you will lose not only your processor, but your cascading billing and affiliate processing as well.

Of course, with CCBill, this was always the case... drop them and you lose your affiliates (or, at least, all your affiliates link codes break). But with a leased copy of NATS or MPA3, you're never going to be in a position where a sudden and unanticipated clampdown by the cardmember associations could cause you to lose processing overnight if you have multiple processors.

I hope and believe that both Epoch and CCBill have their fingers on the pulse of the industry enough to ensure this would never happen, but purely from a risk management perspective, having your cascading/affiliate software be a separate third party product not tied to a single processor is the safest, provided that your program has enough revenues to justify the cost.