Hello all-

I'm looking for advice. We have a merchant account with firstpay.net which we are unhappy with. We are using Paypal.com currently, but are having potential clients turn away because they do not like the sign-up process. We sent in an inquiry to 2checkout.com and it was responded to quickly, but they do not meet all our needs. Here are some things we need:

1) The ability to have regular hosting clients' cc charged in a recurring manner so that we do not have to worry much with it. We need true recurring payments, not batch upload where we might as well be doing it by hand or an automatic bill service that only sends out bills via email.(Yes, we checked echo.)

2) The ability to accept orders from mail addresses such as @yahoo.com or @hotmail.com. Quite a few of our customers that have been with us for 6 or 7 months have these type of free email addresses.

3) The ability for myself, personally, to be able to enter our clients' cc info on occasions. For example, we have a client that had to terminate his credit card because his number got stolen. We allowed him to keep his website up and to catch-up on payments later. Besides setting the new card up for recurring payments, we would need to charge the new card for the 2 months of hosting he received while waiting for the card; hence, we would need to enter the info ourselves.
Another example involves resellers for our hosting. We add up all the charges for the accounts each reseller has, then make one charge against their cc. We will need the ability to input the charge ourselves each month, as the number of accounts a reseller has constantly changes. In other words, some of our accounts will need recurring billing(regular customers), and some will not(resellers).

4) A short application and approval process. We need it like yesterday.

Thank you for your help. I look forward to hearing from you.

-Lamar

Have you looked at revecom.com? The only other alternative I know of but have not used is propay.com

Thanks for the reply, Gurudev.

Yes, we have talked to revecom.com, but they do not allow you to do anything manually. We would be "up the creek" as far as charging resellers. Also, how can anyone afford those rates?:)

-Lamar

Lamar:

For the last 18 months I've used www.internetsecure.com.

1) They offer automatic recurring billing feature

2) Receiving orders from free email addresses is fine. They are more concerned with orders passing their stringent AVS system.

3) Aside from the real-time processing online, I am able to go into the admin area and MANUALLY process a payment if I want to.

4) It's a basic signup process, takes about 1 week for approval process.

vito, are the merchant accounts provided by Internet Secure "real" (e.g. does your company name appear on your customers credit card statement, and can you take credit card information yourself if you wish?)

My customers' credit card statements read "Talking Presents via INTERNETSECURE". (Talking Presents is my company name, btw)

I regularly get customers placing orders over the phone on my toll free line. I simply take the order on the phone, then I log into my IS admin panel, and process a "Manual Transaction".

Sounds good.

My only concern now is that on their web site they say that they can not accept non-canadian web hosting companies. I've emailed them, and will keep you posted on their reply.

That's news to me. Where on their site do you see that they do not accept non-Canadian?

Take a look at http://www.internetsecure.com/countries.html.

Try http://www.internetsecure.com/faq.html and scroll down to # 4. There they state that they won't accept "Non Canadian Web Hosting Companies".

Avara:
I see what you mean. Sorry, I never knew they had that exclusion. Too bad, they're really good to work with. Maybe they'll respond to your email and make an exception. You never know...

Good luck.