Hey, I've been wondering how other people do it, but when you get a new signup, do you bill them right away and then setup the account, or do you setup the account, the bill them seperatly?

Bill them first, if you don't any joe can signup and spam etc, while your waiting for him to pay ;) :D

Greetings:

Collect the money up front, then provide the services.

Thank you.

Originally posted by dynamicnet
Collect the money up front, then provide the services.
Yes absolutely.

Thats how I do it currently, I just thought it may be better to check their details before they've paid you the money to avoid chargebacks :(

Yes, that would be good to have a chance to make some controls before billing. I don't know but having your own Merchant account could help. I'm not sure though since I always used systems like 2checkout & Paysystems.

Our system processes the credit card and does the basic authorize.net fraud check, AVS, etc. If the card is accepted, then we can easily check the IP of who signed up, verify the email makes sense, and other key information checks out ok.

Then we simply create the account. If a fradulent order does make it through or it seems to be fraudlent because of the IP origin or something we may request further verification or in extreme instances cancel the charge completely.

Bills them, then our scripts recieve the billing confirmation and it automatically adds account/sends info.

On things without instant activation we bill first also.