My company primarily develops transactional Java applications. Most of our clients use CyberSource as their gateway, but we had one that was only using Authorize.Net and has therefore been affected by the DDoS, and they've already begun to migrate to CyberSource. The clients using CyberSource have been happy with it, and the general consensus here seems to be that they are tops when it comes to reliability. But that doesn't mean of course they can't or won't have problems. So my question is--what is the second most reliable payment gateway? Cost isn't much of an issue--most of our client sites are doing 7 figures or more in dollar sales/year. We want to create a component for our Java based e-commerce framework that will send a test transaction to the gateway at a customer defined interval; if that fails to return properly, we'll try the secondary gateway. If that one works, the app will route authorization requests to the secondary gateway, and return to using the primary gateway when it returns to normal operation. We'll probably be using the open source Quartz (http://www.opensymphony.com/quartz/) scheduling library to do this; if anyone is interested we might release the code under an open source license of some sort.

Well your best bet would be to talk to your procesor first to see who they support.

Authorizenet.com is most well known since they do advertise. Verisign seems to be pretty good so far. LinkPoint - never had an issue with them & the last time they were down was January 2002 during a major upgrade.

I would recommend talking to Corey and Russ over at http://www.merchantaccounts4less.com. Corey has been very helpful with everything from helping us getting hosting to merchant accounts to 800 numbers. We are extremely pleased with LinkPoint & its stability. I have heard of CyberSource only in passing, but I was very happy that I met Corey on here & listened to him to choose LinkPoint. I would have lost thousands of dollars if I had not listened to him.

You might also talk to them about their reseller / affiliate program. I have referred enough people over to them that it actually pays for my merchant account. I could not be happier

If you are using Authorize.Net and looking for a secondary backup option - I'd suggest eProcessingNetwork, Plug-n-Pay or CyberSource.

CyberSource is by far the most reliable system that I've ever worked with and they have handled more volume than any other system... we're talking on the order of up to several million trans/day and several billion/year in processing volume online.

If you are looking for a backup to CyberSource - well, Authnet, PNP, EPN, Verisign - are all options that I'm familiar with and which have worked out very well.