Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Ecommerce Hosting & Discussion : Merchant Account - Multiple Sites?

[pmcdonnell]

Hello All,

How is everyone handling merchant transactions when you have multiple websites?

Lets say you have a hosting site and you purchase someone elses hosting website. Now you could merge all into your brand, but what if you want to keep both brands, how do you process credit cards for both sites through one merchant account? Is it possible?

[InfoDoma]

You will need to get two merchant accounts then.

[amusive.com]

Okay, so I have this same "problem." What I currently do is bill under my company name, AMUSIVE.COM, despite that site not selling anything .

There is something called dynamic billing -- you'll see it if you've ever ordered from amazon or several other places. It involves a string*descriptor, where the descriptor is passed at bill-time. I have NO idea what companies provide this -- but if you find out I'd love to know too!

[pmcdonnell]

Originally posted by InfoDoma
You will need to get two merchant accounts then.

Well I don't really think that is necessary, I am just looking to submit processing from different domains. I don't care that it will have one billing name.

[netgogo]

I think PaySystems allows multiples websites for a single set-up fee, but I am not 100% sure of that.
Otherwise, I also think that you could centralise your payments on a separate webpage that will be your official Merchant account. I think it should work, but I am not sure if PaySystems or 2CheckOut accept that (on the long run)?

[rghf]

2checkout will normally give you a second accounts cheaper if you want to do it that way

Rus

[Corey Bryant]

It depends on what these sites are selling. If one is high risk (gaming, adult), you should have two merchant accounts.

But if they are all pretty low risk, you can have one merchant aco**** (no matter what those sales people tell you). They just want to get those accounts.

For an example, I have a friend who sells floor machine (those big buffers, etc). Some companies consider this a rask because of the size of the machine but we did not. He contacted me the other week - wanted to start to sell his cleaning / office supplies online. I told him no problem - we just update his merchant application to reflect what he is selling. And on his new site he has it in the footer & on the payment page that www.abc.com is owned by www.xyz.com. And even more on the payment page - that the charges on the card will reflect www.xyz.com

As long as you meet a few basic requirements - it can be done.

[cdgcommerce]

Hi Phil,

If you want to maintain both hosting brands as their own independent label, then yes - you will need to two merchant accounts as a given merchant account can only have one DBA that is displayed to the cardholder on their statement.

However, if you are able to have one brand and one billing DBA for both (i.e. "ABC Hosting is an XYZ Company, billing is done by XYZ") then one merchant account would suffice.

Part of this is more so a marketing issue than anything else. If it is important to keep the brands separate then a two account solution would be best. Otherwise, if you don't think people will mind paying the "parent company" on their billing, a single account would work just fine.