Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Ecommerce Hosting & Discussion : Authorize.Net alternative

[woods01]

We recently made the decision to axe Authorize.net as our payment gateway after learning old news that Visa had purchased them.

We see it is as something that shouldn't of been permitted since Visa and Mastercard are suppose to be at the top of the chain and simply enforce policy and marketing.

We use e-onlinedata as our merchant account provider and assumed our only choice of alternatives was limited to Plug n Pay for which we tried and it was a joke.

We asked e-online if there was any other options and to our surprise there was one. They said they support Network Merchant Inc "NMI" as a payment gateway.

The salespeople at e-online are seemingly trained to down talk NMI since they claim to be the #1 authorize.net reseller so im sure authorize.net pays them better than NMI.

We switched to NMI and it appears to be that NMI doesn't provide the support for their system but rather the support is referred back to e-online (which is fine since their support rocks).

While this has been going on we've once again tried to terminate an authorize.net account and it's always a pain in the butt.

You submit a ticket to close the gateway and if you ask any questions in the same ticket or have another active ticket they close your account and you can no longer access the support area since it's all tied into your gateway account for which they close.

So once they close the gateway account you no longer have access to any billing information, no statements etc...

I had this happen to me once before and was honored a chargeback by the bank because Anet did not provide a statement of service that I had access to. Here we are again at the same crossroads and while I previously said the call time to authorize.net support was better I was told my time to wait to speak to someone was 35 minutes.

Perhaps I dialed another extension the last time.

So you do have alternatives to Authorize.net, your merchant account provider probably doesn't want to tell you because authorize.net pays them well. Authorize.Net's support still sucks unless you have 35 minutes to kill.

35 minutes was the average hold time I recall with them dating back to 2008. Im not sure if in all cases you wait that long, but I do recall our initial call to them back in 08 did take quite a long time.

[amspcs]

Dear Woods01--I can't argue with any of your perceptions about service at Authorize.net, Plug n Pay, or anybody else. For what it's worth, I do think you have the 'players' and their roles a little confused--not unusual, lots of people do, and I do admit few in the industry go out of their way to clarify these things. The processors don't get paid by the gateway, the ISO re-seller does, so in that regard I think you're blaming the wrong party. Also, the issue of why a processor pushes one gateway over another may or may not be about who pays better, but (at least in our case) it's driven largely by which gateway works easily and well with the most processing networks and gateways. And in this regard, nobody comes close to A.net in nearly universal compatibility. Please understand from the resellers perspective: When they sell a gateway that doesn't jibe with the merchant's setup, that directly translates to headaches for the reseller. As for your problems with CS in cancelling A.net, just call (877) 447-3938, give them your Gateway ID #, and I can't imagine why you'd have difficulty. Even better, put your cancellation order in writing and mail, certified return receipt requested. Purely as a matter of personal opinion, I don't have a problem with Visa buying A.net anymore than I have a problem with GM buying Delco auto batteries--I don' see a conflict of any kind and consider it market expansion. Finally, about alternative gateways to Auth.net, there are a couple of them we have very successfully sold over the years other than A.net when specific needs and circumstances so dictated--like everything else each has strengths and weaknesses. That said, there are also a couple of gateway providers to avoid like the plague--tread VERY carefully before you buy yourself an ulcer. Make sure you talk to someone who knows what he/she is talking about BEFORE you sign off with some brand X gateway. A word to the wise.....Hope this helps.

[Alliedcardprocessing]

Linkpoint is a good alternative

[woods01]

Im not confused. Visa owns authorize.net.

Authorize.net has a few programs for "resellers".

You either are a referral like e-onlinedata or your a reseller like TMS.

A reseller will bill you directly and anet will bill you if your referred.
A reseller is provided a wholesale discount rate, a referral is paid per referral.

Not sure where I could be confused with this. As far as calling authorize.net when im billed for something that I made a good faith effort in canceling (such as submitting a ticket as requested by authorize.net) and then they remove your access to the ticket system by deleting your account the banks are more than happy to charge those types of transactions back to authorize.net since they refuse to provide a statement of service.

[energizedit]

What about Quantum gateway? I've heard they are a good alternative to authorize.net and work with all the popular billing systems.

[Alliedcardprocessing]

My company is a reseller of Auth.net and a few others gateways, We are awarded interchange but we do pay authorize dot net

Interchange = Visa and mastercard wholesale rates

[cdgcommerce]

woods01,

You are definitely correct in that the customer service hold times for Authorize.Net have been pretty horrendous for a long time now. This was the case several years back and although I haven't checked very recently myself, every indication is that this is still very much so the case. I have had staff tell me it took them almost an hour on some occasions to get through earlier this year.

In fact, I can tell you that these Authorize.net frustrations with both service and a lack of willingness to add new features were a prime driver in us making the decision several years ago to migrate as many of our own merchants as possible over to the Quantum Gateway platform (which Energized referenced above) despite the fact that it would eliminate the gateway revenue that we would otherwise earn on the Authorize.Net side... and I'm very, very glad that we did this especially now that we can look back over a couple years of merchant history on it.

Regarding the question of 3rd party compatibility - there are some gateways that have Authorize.Net emulation modes which can readily address that. I know that Quantum has it as does ePN and there may be others. There are a few other gateways that we have used (PNP, iTransact, etc.) and been resellers for in the past but these days we utilize just Quantum & Authorize.Net and that is at about a 95% / 5% ratio.

In addition, the concern that you brought up with Visa's acquisition is a good point and one that others in the industry have also talked about. Frankly, it rubs a lot of people in the industry the wrong way in that Visa now owns Cybersource (an ISO/MSP) and a gateway (Authorize.Net) while also essentially partnering with hundreds of other payment service solutions and other ISO/MSP's at the same time. There is definitely a conflict of interest present - although other such conflicts of interest do exist elsewhere in the industry.

It is not unusual, for example, for a front-end processing network to work with ISO's but also have a sales team that goes after the large national accounts. Usually there are no channel conflicts in this scenario because one group is targeting the big box retailers and the other is targeting the SMB marketplace.

Best of luck with your search!