Hello Everyone

I do a lot of website design and development and recently I have had more clients that need a merchant account. To make it easy on my self I have been trying to find a Merchant account provider that I could recommend. Somebody that would be easy to setup with a website. In looking around most don't seem to be trust worthy. Also I have seen some that have information about becoming a reseller or ISO.

So may questions are as follows.
Is there a Merchant Account Provider that you would recommend?
Is it worth while to become a reseller or ISO with only a few accounts?
Is there a website that compares the major Providers and reseller ISO programs?
What is the difference between a reseller ISO and MSP?
Do you have any other advice?


Thanks
Richie Schut
Partner ShortBird Multimedia

You're not going to becoming an ISO/MSP unless you have tens of thousands of dollars to back it and experience in the industry.

CDGCommerce.com (find Chris and his signature for current promotion) frequents this forum and has both great rates, great service and a reseller program designed for web hosts and designers.

It might benefit you to become a reseller / merchant - of course your return might be better but learning the business is very difficult. Rules & regulations change all the time. Prices are usually upped in April and sometimes in October. These are the two months to watch for.

Becoming an ISO is a bit more complicated and requires a bit more. There are companies out there that will help you out, but I think it is around $10K-$15K yearly fees to Visa.

Ok so now I know that I am not going to become an ISO. Are there any reseller programms that you recomend? Or a Merchant account provider you recomend to all of your clients?

Find a couple and see if they will work with you on referrals. This way, you can offer a wider range of services / products. It will probably be a lot easier for you in the long run actually. This way you can concentrate more on your design and development

Thanks for the kind words and mention, Dan. :)

I would definitely agree that the best course of action would be to become a reseller or agent for an existing ISO/MSP.

The only reason that you would ever want to take on the substantial costs & operational responsibilities to be an ISO/MSP is if you were doing it as a core business and you had enough app count and volume to justify it. And the $10K initial registration fee to Visa/MC is really just the smallest piece of the total costs.

There are a lot of good agent/reseller programs in the marketplace. Here are a few suggestions of things to look for with any program:

1. Who is the company that you are interviewing? Are they a registered ISO/MSP or an agent? (i.e. in the latter case, you'd be an agent of an agent of an ISO/MSP)

2. What kind of compensation structure are they providing? An Interchange-based profit sharing structure will always be desirable versus a buy rate structure and any processor you talk to should be able to explain how this works in detail as it is an important aspect of merchant processing costs & pricing.

3. Do you have flexibility to set your own pricing on accounts or are you "locked" into promoting just one set of rates & fees?

4. Does your provider publicly promote merchant accounts from their corporate site - meaning that a prospect who goes to your site could easily go to theirs and see pricing & sign up directly - or does the provider do its best to limit what can be found on their corporate web site?

5. What kind of sales & marketing support is provided?

6. Is your residual income subject to any vesting period or are you vested 100% from day one for the life of all accounts? (and more importantly, is this in writing?)

7. What are your responsibilities and what are the responsibilities of the processor? (you'll want to ideally be able to refer business and let the processor handle the support of the merchant unless you prefer to be hands-on with every aspect)

Best of luck with your search!

I used to use a few different companies for my clients. I would refer the clients over, explaining to them that they are my partner for merchant accounts. Some of them will pay a one-time finder's fee while others share the residual income. I primarily use LoudCommerce (http://www.loudcommerce.com) and as a back up, I use Merchant Express (http://www.merchantexpress.com/).