Hi WHT - new member here, so please bear with me. I've been looking through the ecommerce forum for information about various cart/gateway options, and obviously there are quite a few. I wonder if anyone has had positive or negative experiences based on the brand of the payment processing system they're using. My experience is that most shoppers are just savvy enough to be aware of Verisign, but looking through some of the posts here, it looks to me like CDGCommerce has a pretty competitive set of offerings.

So my question is, "Does brand matter to your customers?"

Cheers, Michael

Welcome to the forums, Michael. :)

One quick note of clarification... for any merchant who uses CDGcommerce or any other similiar merchant processing for payment processing, this fact would not be "visible" to the end user since it is a direct merchant account.

The only thing that the end user would see is that they can place an order directly with their Visa, MasterCard, Amex, Discover, Diners or JCB card. (based on whatever card type(s) the merchant opted to get setup for)

This is in contrast to a 3rd party processing solution like PayPal or 2Checkout where - due to regulatory reasons - the 3PP's name needs to be clearly disclosed as it is not a direct merchant account for the merchant.

Some merchants do tend to favor Verisign for security reasons and using Verisign's gateway - you do get a logo that you can place on your website. Some merchants will also place on their even what gateway they are using.

Myself - it does not matter to me & probably to a lot of people because they understand what goes on in the backend. They know that if you have the SSL lock on your website - it is secure.

I do understand how some people like the name Verisign though. When you say Verisign, a lot of people think security. And then you would have other people that might think other things because of issues / problems they have had with Network Solutions. You won't be able to please all the people all the time

Corey is right...All companies have 'bad days' in their history, so you can`t know for shure..As you may start working with a company that today is ideal..but this doesn`t mean that tomorrow it won`t become 'inapperciable for any cooperation'. Anyway clients usually don`t care...

I highly doubt that many customers will care (or even be aware) which merchant account you use to process credit card transactions. A quality site that is easy to use and navigate is much more important, imho.

I would not say this below post is relevance to this topic,
but I think it can give you some ideas:

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=337766

If by "branding" you are talking about what SSL certificate logo is pasted on the site - that might make a difference to some folks... especially if you are doing business-to-consumer sales.

And in those instances, every tiny detail can have a bearing. The color of the site, the layout, the way products are presented - and the list goes on and on. :)

However, the brand of SSL cert itself has no bearing on what payment gateway or merchant account is necessarily being used behind the scenes.

For instance, if you could have an SSL cert from Verisign and use an entirely different payment gateway & merchant account, as an example.

That's pretty close to what I mean - notofying the customer of the payment processor brand. SSL certs are a related, though distinct, issue. I was just wondering - thanks, everyone, for the interesting thoughts.