Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Ecommerce Hosting & Discussion : Ikobo - cc merchant. any idea?

[rhee]

Hi

I had just came across with ikobo.com and was deciding to register with them, has anyone used their service? any feedbacks?

They are somewhat similar to paypal however they have more countries which can avail their service and their fee is just 3.99% + $.29 per transaction. No need to verify credit cards or bank accounts inorder to use their merchant service and they will send you an I-Kard which is a VISA ATM to withdraw your funds.

Any other comments?

[ImLagging]

i've used them to pay for a design i purchased. similar setup to paypal it seems. but you have to sign up to pay.

[AdY]

I use them also (since july) and their support is OUTSTANDING! (an ATM ate my i-kard because of a mistake i did and they helped me a lot to get my i-kard back) and they have 'not-so-huge' charges; however, both the buyer and the seller need to signup before using it (and when you pay it's complicated though)
Hope it helps.

[Tazzman]

I also used it to pay for a design lately. The site timed out about 4 times before my payment was done, which wasn't very impressive or confidence inspiring.

[rhee]

Thats weird, I contacted their support and told me that the buyer is not actually creating an account, its just for records purposes and that the said account is not an active account at all.

Anyway, what if you have a monthly plan and someone purchase it, when paying, they have to specify an email and a password right. After one month when they are going to pay again, will they click the "Already an ikobo member link" or the they can re-enter their email address?

[rhee]

Originally posted by AdY
I use them also (since july) and their support is OUTSTANDING! (an ATM ate my i-kard because of a mistake i did and they helped me a lot to get my i-kard back) and they have 'not-so-huge' charges; however, both the buyer and the seller need to signup before using it (and when you pay it's complicated though)
Hope it helps.

by saying complicated, does it mean that when someone pays you, they have to verify their credit card? and if not, please elaborate complicated.

[AdY]

Take a look in their FAQ, it's quite self-explanatory.
When you REQUEST money, only an email address and a password should do the job; you will be charged a one-time fee of 15$ when your i-kard comes + the shipping, if other than regular.
to SEND funds you need to activate your account using your credit-card; before making the 1st payment also you will need to call your bank so they can confirm a "split in two accounts" made by ikobo.com as a security thing.
The process it's quite easy, and once you created an account... it belongs to you Also it's very very easy for the RECEIVER and not so complicated for the SENDER.

[rhee]

I contacted themand said that its actually a different thing to send money and to purchase to a merchant account. They said that their FAQ as well as their terms and condition is outdated and needs to get renewed. You may want to refer to their "Additional Merchant Policy" link since its more recent. Here are some of the policies they have which might be useful


1. As a merchant, you do not need to verify your credit/debit card although it might come in handy they say.

2. When someone purchase through a merchant, the buyer will indicate an email and password, thus, creating an account. However this account is not a regular account but is just a purchasing account.

3. Buyer would not need to verify their credit card since there account is not a regular account, this is just for record purpose.

4. To raise your initial send/recieve limit of $205 you need to send them documents through email or fax but you can subsititute documents such as passport, utility bill, drivers license with any document that has your name and your address. I sent a scanned copy my business name registration certificate in my case.

And with regards to their support, they do have an excellent one I chatted with one of their reps for almost an hour, asking every bit of question I could think of

[kyun]

Not to say they are not good. At least the support is there. But I was having hard time trying to contact them. Each time I chat with their online support it took about 5 minutes to answer each my question. (I figured out there's some bugs on the AnswerChat script). Sometimes I had to repeat over and over again for same question. Few times the chat ended by operator without any reason. I have to initiate the chat again, at times I couldn't even contact them anymore. To balance my bias, at least few support staff have been very helpful. Luis is one of the best support staff I've talked to. .And thanks to Alan (castlemelody) from this forum you have been very helpful too.

If they could improve on the support matter, they should do better than some other 3rd party merchants. Their fees structure is ok, the merchant control is easy to use and looks very intuitive.

Another "catch" is they hold 50% of merchant balance for 90 days before releasing it. Anyway this is not a big deal since for some international users who subscribe to 3rd party merchant providers it usually takes 15-day cycle to update the balance and another 1-2 weeks to deliver the cheque, 2-4 weeks to clear the cheque before it could deposited into our account. It's another 2-3 months in that case, just that without first 50% to be withdrawn.

I'm still testing the water and if I do like it, I will perhaps open a discussion/tutorial site about iKobo in the future for people especially the international users who are looking for alternatives to many 3rd party merchants out there. So far, so good.

[rhee]

Thank you very much and I am looking forward to the tutorial

[SEATi]

By the way... who's behind Ikobo? There must be someone (person or company) supporting it.

I wouldn't trust my cc info and my income to a company that can go broke or disappear before sunrise.

(I'm not saying that Ikobo is bad, I'm just noting that it's important to know what's it's backup)

[zighost]

Originally posted by kyun

Another "catch" is they hold 50% of merchant balance for 90 days before releasing it. Anyway this is not a big deal since for some international users who subscribe to 3rd party merchant providers it usually takes 15-day cycle to update the balance and another 1-2 weeks to deliver the cheque, 2-4 weeks to clear the cheque before it could deposited into our account. It's another 2-3 months in that case, just that without first 50% to be withdrawn.

Yes, i agree.ikobo is not good for withdrawn of your money.

[123x]

If you need a real merchant account.
look at http://www.merchantplus.cc they are great.

[kyun]

Own merchant account looks professional, but sometimes it doesn't worth the extra effort to trace each transaction, one by one, to lookout for potential frauds.

iKobo has a big advantage over paypal, that is, it accepts more countries than paypal. (also their staff do respond better and faster)

SEATi, these are the people behind iKobo.
http://ikobo.com/ikobo.cgi?action=info_mgmt

[rickkumar]

I strongly disagree with most of you that mentioned ikobo support is good or outstanding.

I doubt if they even have a support department at all.

I have sent them so many requests and emails in last 10 days and not even a single reply to my question.

I wanted to know they exact merchant commission structure (especially that if the buyer fee of 2% is in addition to the merchant fees?) and if they have 'recurring billing' option for subscription based sites such as dating sites etc.

I think there support is non-existent!

Thanks.