Has anyone moved from the Paysystems Merchant IBA platform over to the Merchant IMA platform?

We did.

Originally posted by hilda
We did.
(1). So do you have to manually process your recurring payments?

(2). How do they display recurring clients?

(3). What is the control panel like? Is it basically the same as the Merchant IBA panel?

(4). How did you migrate your clients from the IBA over to the IMA?

(5). Are the payment urls for your site basically setup the same?

Much appreciated. :)

(1). So do you have to manually process your recurring payments?
- Yes

(2). How do they display recurring clients?
- They don't, you have to keep track of recurring payments on your own.

(3). What is the control panel like? Is it basically the same as the Merchant IBA panel?
- Very sparse, much less functionality.

(4). How did you migrate your clients from the IBA over to the IMA?
- We use the Processing Schedule option in the IBA and as payments come due we remove them from IBA and bill them through IMA one at a time. Then we also use an external billing program to keep track of billing and recurring dates for each account. Keep in mind that you have to collect the customers' credit card info before billing them through the IMA.

(5). Are the payment urls for your site basically setup the same?
- There are no payment URLs, you can not define products. You have to use a form to collect, encrypt and save customer data and then bill them through IMA. They do have an API but it's better to do some fraud checking first before blindly routing orders to their system.

Thanks :)

According to your site, you are using the Paysystems urls. Is that with the IMA platform?

Hi,

Please look this ask;


"(5). Are the payment urls for your site basically setup the same?
- There are no payment URLs, you can not define products. You have to use a form to collect, encrypt and save customer data and then bill them through IMA. They do have an API but it's better to do some fraud checking first before blindly routing orders to their system."

whats the main difference between the two.
IBA is less money, but people are moving to MBA.

Why the move, whats the difference. BTW I read about them, but all I need is a medium for my clients to purchase my product and a reoccuring billing system.

Hi,

You can checkout their site for difference.

Have a nice day
:)

Originally posted by Aussie Bob
Thanks :)

According to your site, you are using the Paysystems urls. Is that with the IMA platform? That's still the IBA platform, we'll be switching over the weekend to a secure form, doing some testing on the encryption.

IBA --> 3nd party
IMA --> real merchant account

Hi,

I think better revecom ima account;

http://www.merchant-accounts.ca/

Have a nice day
:)

Originally posted by hilda
That's still the IBA platform, we'll be switching over the weekend to a secure form, doing some testing on the encryption.
Ok, I see. So basically you get access to a manual processing system where you input new orders and recurring orders?

Yep, that's it cowboy.

Yet to begin using it ourselves, but this constant game of playing 'catch the missed transactions' is getting a little old. Not sure whether to use paysystems IMA or use the Planet Payment one we have. PP's support is flat out nasty.

Greg Moore

I'm attaching some screen caps of the merchant interface so you can see what it looks like.

here's another one

i see, but i think rolling reserve nonsense at real merchant.

virtual terminal

auth form

Might want to fuzz out your IP, better safe than sorry, but thanks for the main menu view as I have been thinking alot about using paysystems.com.

hilda

That screenshot shows your customer ID... might want to edit that out... might give hackers an easy target to try to crack.

thanks for the suggestions, here's an edited image:

Thanks very much Hilda. I'm usually giving answers about Paysystems. Not used to asking the questions. :)

What is the software you use to keep track of your recurring payments?

phpmanager, modernbill or ispmanagerinbox etc.

Originally posted by hilda
(1). So do you have to manually process your recurring payments?
- Yes

The IMA FAQ states:

28) Does PaySystems offer a Recurring Billing service?
Yes.

Is that a mistake there Hilda, or can you set a payment to be recurring?

Cheers

Gary

That's the same FAQ for the IBA and IMA, I think....:eek:

Pretty much the same. Some differences such as "16) What will be the name that appears on my customers' credit card statements? Under the Merchant IMA account model, the merchant's name and telephone number appear."

So I wonder if the recurring part was left in unintentionally.

Originally posted by Aussie Bob
Thanks very much Hilda. I'm usually giving answers about Paysystems. Not used to asking the questions. :)

What is the software you use to keep track of your recurring payments?
I use Contact Browser (http://www.mooresoftware.com) ($35), you can setup recurring reminders for each account and also do custom reports for accounts that have due payments, export data to excel, etc. I also use FF Billing Manager Pro to generate & email invoices, keep track of payments, etc.
It generates and posts recurring invoices as well but it does not interface directly with a payment gateway.

Originally posted by Editor


The IMA FAQ states:

28) Does PaySystems offer a Recurring Billing service?
Yes.

Is that a mistake there Hilda, or can you set a payment to be recurring?

Cheers

Gary
IMA does not do recurring.

Thanks for the confirmation.

(btw, we used to us FFBillpro for dialup ISP clients because it was about the only thing other than Optigold that would email invoices in plain text :))

Gary

Originally posted by akashik
Yep, that's it cowboy.
"I don't wanna be a cowboy" :D
Yet to begin using it ourselves, but this constant game of playing 'catch the missed transactions' is getting a little old. Not sure whether to use paysystems IMA or use the Planet Payment one we have. PP's support is flat out nasty.
So we just setup a secure order form and collect the client's details, manually process the credit card payment etc. ?

What secure system do you use to store the client's credit card details?

Well that's all part of the grand scheme really. I've been looking at systems on and off for over a year now, and haven't settled on one yet. Two merchant accounts and a copy of modernbill just sitting here collecting dust for now. Paysystems IBA system always made it easy to just put it off. Now they seem intent on dropping the ball on a permanent basis it's time to start putting the grey matter to work and figuring out what to do.

I'm still leaning towards the IMA account, but as far as I know, nothing plugs into it.

Greg Moore

Now they seem intent on dropping the ball on a permanent basis
What does that mean? Are they not paying on time? Can you explain what the problem is besides the recurring payments issue?

thanks

Originally posted by Gurudev
What does that mean? Are they not paying on time? Can you explain what the problem is besides the recurring payments issue?
IMO, they're not ontop of their recurring system. I was supposed to have 18 recurrrings come out yesterday and none did. You can watch every transaction if you only have a few, but when you have hundreds, it makes it damn near impossible.

Recurring transactions is the very lifeblood of any host and the fact that they cannot process these payments ontime, kills the cashflow. I have lost all faith in their automated recurring system so I'm looking to manually process these recurring payments.

It's not something that I want to do. I'd love nothing more than their automated recurring system to work properly. Processing manual transactions is going to add an hour or 2 of work to my daily load, but it's essential that these payments be processed properly to ensure the cashflow remains strong.

Originally posted by Aussie Bob

IMO, they're not ontop of their recurring system. I was supposed to have 18 recurrrings come out yesterday and none did.

I don't get it.. let me make sure I understand what is the problem you are having:

When you do a listing of the "Reoccurring Transaction Processing Schedule" for the next 30 days.. sometimes these scheduled (recurring) transactions [b]do not occur[b]? :confused: :eek:

If this is correct, do they occur later on (maybe a day or two later).. or are they just gone forever?

Exactly. Customer's expect consistancy and deserve as much. When billing is supposed to occur on a certain date it *should* occur on that date. For over two years paysystems has delivered that without fail, until a month ago. Now not only are we forced to log in each day to check the past few days for missed transactions, but - more importantly - our customer base is forced to see their billing appear on odd days.

We have a great bunch of people hosted with us. Most are pretty laid back and understand that sometimes the internet does work quite like clockwork, but at the end of the day a webhost's job is to be consistant, standard and as dull as dishwater. It's a basic constant of the host that makes a customer comfortable in an industry that has more ups and downs than a yo-yo.

In short, do your job well, don't throw a spanner in the works, and always be there when they need you. Hosting isn't rocket science. I would presume that a billing provider should - to quote an american:

"to hold these truths as self evident"

It's not dangerous to our business thanks to due diligence. We see that the day before wasn't billed, drop a note to support, and within two days, the processing gets done. What bites my apple is that the reply from support makes it appear as if they've never seen it happen before :rolleyes: Anyone who's ever dealt with any form of online support knows when someone's telling porkies. With everything else we have to do in a day I would hope that billing was being taken care of by the guys that take $1 plus 3.5% - you assume they're there to earn their money... I know I am.

Gurudev:
They're paying on time. No settlements are disappearing or showing up later than usual. It's simply a matter of recurring transactions being borked. We've just got to push them to make sure that everything is being charged when it should. That why Bob (and many more of us) are looking at the IMA account. Pulling ourselves clear of the slow motion 100 car pile-up that recurring billing has become.

More than once I've told them I'm not too ticked with the problems - into everyone's life a little rain must fall. What does fry my bacon is the 'plausable denial' that anything is really wrong. At every attempt to illicit a response we all get:

"Oh, we know something's up. The techs are looking at it and it'll all be peachy keen in a day or two"

Well.. it's almost a month now and peachy keen and two days "doesn't wash with this lil black duck". - to quote the sage Daffy.

At the end of the day, we get paid, and our customer get billed. It takes some work to make sure it all happens, and paysystems hasn't really earnt a dime of their transaction fees as far as I'm concerned, but it does happen. Considering the self destruction of their opposition lately they're the best of a pretty bad bunch.

I think Tim Greer himself would be proud of the length of this post :D

Greg Moore

Get a custom billing system or something off the shelf like ModernBill Bob, and plug it into a merchant account or something "off the shelf" like Worldpay. I can't see it taking one to two hours a day to plug a dozen payments into Revecom's IMA though, as long as you have captured those card details securely.

There are many options. The more you spend on a billing solution (whether that is setup costs for a pre-fab solution or man hours in developing one), the easier it becomes.

Gary

Originally posted by mrzippy
When you do a listing of the "Reoccurring Transaction Processing Schedule" for the next 30 days.. sometimes these scheduled (recurring) transactions do not occur? :confused: :eek:

If this is correct, do they occur later on (maybe a day or two later).. or are they just gone forever?

Unless you drop a note in to support they just stay in the queue. We just send a support ticket showing the date, order ID, name, and fee, and they get taken care of within a couple of days.

If you have a couple of people being billed it's easy enough... a couple of hundred or more and it becomes an issue to keep an eye on them all... the job the billing provider is supposed to be doing.

Greg Moore

Originally posted by akashik
Unless you drop a note in to support they just stay in the queue.

Sorry.. I'm a bit dense tonight. I still don't get it.

What queue? When I do a listing of upcoming recurring transactions (processing scheule), I can see that I have XX transactions scheduled for tomorrow.

Are you saying that sometimes these scheduled transactions are not being billed? How can you tell? Do you manually track to see that tomorrow you have XX transactions, and then at the end of the day you check to see that there are XX transactions in the Settled Transactions area?

Otherwise, how do you know that they aren't being billed?

I'm getting a little worried..

Originally posted by mrzippy
Are you saying that sometimes these scheduled transactions are not being billed? How can you tell? Do you manually track to see that tomorrow you have XX transactions, and then at the end of the day you check to see that there are XX transactions in the Settled Transactions area?

On the processing screen there's a drop down menu that you can pull up previous days. Just go back day by day and see if anything is listed that should have been billed. If anything appears then inform support of the order number, name and amount.

I wouldn't worry too much as once they're aware they tend to get billed. It's more an annoyance than anything else.

Greg Moore

I see.. so if I select a day and then get this message: No Unprocessed Recurring Records Found For Date: 11/21/2002 ... then that is good, right?

So you guys are having a message that says there are unprocessed records found?

Thanks for helping me understand this.

Originally posted by mrzippy
I see.. so if I select a day and then get this message: ... then that is good, right?

Yes that's good. If something's missed then it'll appear the same way as future processing does, with the name, amount and order number. Best to drop down that menu and go back for the whole of the month just to make sure, day by day.

On the upside, unless your processing hundreds of accounts a month then you'll probably never have the problem.

Greg Moore

Originally posted by akashik


Yes that's good. If something's missed then it'll appear the same way as future processing does, with the name, amount and order number. Best to drop down that menu and go back for the whole of the month just to make sure, day by day.

Ack!!! :mad: :eek: :angry: :mad: :mad: :mad: :( :angry: :angry:

I found 5 transactions over the last month that haven't been processed!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm glad I stumbled into this thread, otherwise those transactions would likely have never been noticed. I've been back 2 months now.. should I go farther? How long has this been going on for? Good grief, this is terrible! Thanks for walking me through this problem.. I'm glad you helped me find this.

Now I'm off to go drop a nasty note to paysystems support.

Originally posted by mrzippy
I'm glad you helped me find this.

;) Glad to help.

Greg Moore

Originally posted by Editor
Get a custom billing system or something off the shelf like ModernBill Bob, and plug it into a merchant account or something "off the shelf" like Worldpay. I can't see it taking one to two hours a day to plug a dozen payments into Revecom's IMA though, as long as you have captured those card details securely.

There are many options. The more you spend on a billing solution (whether that is setup costs for a pre-fab solution or man hours in developing one), the easier it becomes.
Just had a chat with a chap from the St George Bank. They have a system that does automatic recurring transactions [apparently]. You use their "Business Banking" section etc. Looks promising. Might even save a few bucks a month in fees too. :)

Yep, we're in two minds between the ST George and the Bendigo. We bank with both of them, so either will do. I haven't ran all the numbers but I think Bendigo would come out on top since their community bank model is aimed better at the customer.

It's a next month job now. We've got a spa to burn in. :)

Gary

Originally posted by mrzippy
I don't get it.. let me make sure I understand what is the problem you are having:

When you do a listing of the "Reoccurring Transaction Processing Schedule" for the next 30 days.. sometimes these scheduled (recurring) transactions do not occur? :confused: :eek:

If this is correct, do they occur later on (maybe a day or two later).. or are they just gone forever?
The only way to use the Paysystems IBA platform, is to have some kind of system that CHECKS to make sure they do process the recurrings when they're supposed to. IMO, they cannot be trusted without checking what they process and when etc. :eek3:

A local database or client management system (Modernbill/ClientExec/etc) that you maintain alongside Revecom. You could never rely entirely on Revecom as a complete client management system.

Gary

Originally posted by Aussie Bob

So we just setup a secure order form and collect the client's details, manually process the credit card payment etc. ?

What secure system do you use to store the client's credit card details? [/B]
We utilize a secure script we developed for existing customers to submit their credit card info. The script encrypts and saves the info in a mysql database and there is an admin interface to view/search/delete data and also download a delimited file with either a few selected records or all records in the database. It also records the IP address of the user, has anti-flood protection (allows n submissions per day per ip address), checks the referrer field and rejects the submission if it's not submitted from our url, and also has a built-in check to verify if the cc number is a valid one.

Here are some screen captures (http://www.eperfect.net/bscript/)

Once we download the delimited file and transfer the info to our off-line system, we delete the record(s) from the database so there is nothing online for anyone to hack. It's quite simple, but it works fine for us.

We are now modifying the script to use it for accepting new orders as well. We'll use a product url similar to the PaySystems IBA. This covers our needs for now as the vast majority of purchases are single-item, for domain+hosting combinations we'll create a new combo item.

how much it cost an IMA account? (monthly)

Originally posted by juanmanuel
how much it cost an IMA account? (monthly)
http://www.paysystems.com/psMerchant_account1.htm :)

What is monthly fee?

is 35$?
is 50$?

hilda,

What is percentage your rolling reserve?