Hello,

We are currently shopping around for a new merchant account. We've been accepting credit cards for almost 5 years now, and have since switched processors twice due to poor service or other issues. Our current processor seems to place our funds on hold if they exceed $900 for whatever reason, and they will not increase our volume limits despite our impeccable financial record. Also, we have *never* had a chargeback in over 3 years we have been with any merchant processor.

Since we sell higher end dedicated servers and colo, our company routinely needs to process larger amounts, we are shopping for a new processor who we can work with and won't give us such a hassle.

We do have two requirements prior to suggesting any merchant provider:

1. We will NOT accept CardService International (CSI) due to their extremely poor service.

2. We require an account with per-transaction limits of at least $5,000.

3. The merchant processor must work with Authorize.Net for our billing system.

Thanks in advance for suggestions!

Have you tried CDGCommerce I believe it is called? They are a fairly well known option.

Nectar

What is your main reason that it HAS to work w/ Authorize? There are a lot of other Gateways available that may suit your needs.

Also, when you sign up for a new Merchant Account, make sure you estimate on the high end for your Anticipated Volume.

The biggest challenge will be finding a provider that can work with your required per transaction limit. That high of a ticket tends to make the banks a bit nervous, particularly if its a new relationship. Their natural reaction is to want to restrict the ticket size or hold funds. However, with your processing history and time in business, you should have no problems getting someone to work with you. You just need to stress the ticket size, and make sure they are OK with it from the outset.

nectar

Because you are in the US your best option is to use your own personal or company banking institute. Chase is an excellent option as if BOA and Wells Fargo if you happen to bank at one of them. If not you should try Costco.com.
All work well with Authorize.net.

Good luck

What experience did you have with CSI that caused you to not want to use them? They have been great for me from the merchant standpoint, but as a reseller of their services, they were just awful... had to drop them after about 3 weeks and find a better option (they failed to approve a couple of customers with existing merchant accounts from other providers... with no explanation!)

My partner and I have a total of 3 CSI accounts for almost 6 years now and they are fine. Never any major issue. I'm suprised they wont allow higher ticket amounts... for some of our transactions they simply requested copies of the invoices, and after that they let us plug away. Everything from $5.00 to $1000, every month.

We're very satisfied with www.e-onlinedata.com. We average about $15,000/month with many transactions in the $100-500 range and occasionally $1500-2500 transactions. Only once did they ask for a copy of our invoice to customer. They've never placed any holds on our funds which we always receive in our bank account 2 business day later.

Thanks for the suggestions everyone. We appreciate it.

We do not want to deal with CardService Intl. (CSI) since they were bar none, one of the worst companies we have ever dealt with in our history of doing business. Their customer service was extremely poor, not to mention so rude, that we were hung up on at least twice. Their representatives were unwilling to even discuss our gateway issues or reverse erroneous fees made. We also had constant problems with their Linkpoint Central payment platform, and thier reps were barely capable of comprehanding our problems. We had to leave them as quickly as possible. My god, I can't even begin to wonder how a company like this can exist. :(

In any case, we will contact our bank (Wells Fargo) to see if they can work with us on our larger tickets. Our current provider is a nervous nelly despite the fact we have had established merchant accounts and accounting history going back several years. We also have not had any chargebacks in well over 3 years, and even then, that matter was resolved.

Having to deal with getting our funds held up for days at a time with our current processor is not something we are going to deal with, even if that means we will pay a higher discount rate to do this.

Thanks!

Hi,


Try checking linkpoint.com - they have a fast turn around time in approvals and a very nice login panel

Good luck!

Check out vantage card solutions... u might be able to get an interchage+ account with them which is way better than typical blended rates. Most merchant service providers don't want you to know about interchage+ rates. :)

If you want to know how much of it Visa and Mastercard are getting, look here: http://www.tax.state.ny.us/evta/documents/global_contract_appendix_d_table%201_effective_4_1_06.pdf

Everything above that is gravy. ;)

Dont waste your time looking at wells fargo if you dont like CSI, on my bill it always says: " Card Service International, a Registered Service Provider for Wells Fargo Bank NA."

Ok people,

Thanks again for the suggestions posted here.

And yes, we checked with Wells Fargo, and found they go through CSI, therefore, we need to rule them out as well.

On this note, it seems that a large number of these merchant processors use CardService Intl, so we are just trying to screen those out and look for the ones that don't deal with them. The suggestion here given about "vantage card solutions" looks promising, as does a few others we have researched.

At this point, we are making our discount rate secondary only to having a "hassle free" solution. As I said, our company should not be treated as a high risk simply because we have the occasional high ticket transaction. It's beyond me why this is such a problem with our current processor, CDG Commerce considering we have -never- had any fraud issues or chargebacks with them. If fact, we have not had a single chargeback in years. Go figure.

:lovewht:

BTW, I have Wells Fargo direct and have no problem with them and they gave me interchage+ deals becasue I was going to leave them for vantage card solutions. I also had 3 other interchange+ deals including one form another Wells Fargo ISO.

CSI could not give me the same deal as Wells Fargo or one of the other WF ISOs offered... and they tried for several days and then said "we can't go that low". :)

I average $500 per transaction and my highest was about $10,000. We could easily get a higher transaction but people usually pay cash when it is that high. We would offer a discount for cash in that case anyway.

Test stormpay or alertpay