13.12.2006 - StandardPay seeks to educate adult webmasters throughout the world

Each webmaster dreams of the world in which the only issue considering money collected from business is how to spend it. The world with no shaves, no refunds and chargebacks. The world where everything and everyone are honest and fair. Things are not so bright these days however. Merchants of all kinds and especially those who operate in the so-called high-risk niches from time to time face the problem of secure and stable payment processing and many of them are still seeking a solution.

Several years ago opening a merchant account was a daunting task for webmasters with high-risk activities as this required significant efforts, time and money spending. A webmaster had to deal with a bank (and finding one that was eager to work with high-risk business categories was not a casual process), find a reputable and secure payment gateway and then monitor the situation carefully to make sure there is no fraudulent activity that could have lead to account termination. Sounds horrible, but that’s what it was all about.

Later special processing services appeared. Webmaster didn’t have to open merchant accounts by themselves. They only needed to sign up with a processor, who did the job for them – credit cards processing, dealing with the bank etc. Turnkey solutions at your door. Moreover, most of these online payment services providers promised to deal with unpleasant issues like fraudulent activity, unfair chargebacks and so on. Webmaster’s Eden already? No so fast, mate, not so fast.

As the number and volume of online transactions was rapidly increasing, the rules of Visa and MasterCard became stricter as well. This is especially true for the high-risk segments of online business including adult, gambling, gaming etc. And that is exactly where problems appeared - these problems pushed hard both processing companies and merchants. Online adult industry worldwide has recently survived one of the most drastic crises ever. Many processing services simply stopped operations. Some of them have never paid what they owed to the merchants. They simply failed to comply with the new rules and regulations imposed by Visa/MasterCard.

What is interesting about this situation is that not each of these processing services meant to break the rules. Of course some of them deliberately offended the regulations in order to earn more money or at least to earn it wherever possible. But most of the processing companies were simply unaware of the possible consequences to what they though was OK. As a result they’ve been seriously fined and only few were able to keep their feet on the ground after such losses.

Why could this happen? This question was the one every adult webmaster wanted an answer to. The fact is many webmasters never knew the details of their processor’s relations with the acquiring bank. Most of webmasters never bothered themselves with studying Visa/MasterCard rules and regulations. They never knew their rights and responsibilities. That is understandable. Why should one bother himself with boring and techie peculiarities if everything works fine? It did work fine. Adult webmasters value security and stable performance of their online payment services provider more than any other features. They are eager to pay more if they are sure the service is worth it.

But how do they know the quality of their payment processing partner? Many services have never even tried to reveal the details of Visa/MasterCard conditions to their merchants, despite the fact merchants may sometimes be responsible for the problems with Card Association members.

StandardPay, which is one of the leading online payment services providers, has decided to direct the situation the way it should be. Both merchants and payment processing services are the full-fledged participants of the business and they should be aware of the rules according to which they play each and every day.

“MCC 5967: Taking the Mystery Out of the Code” PDF-book comes as a result of the intense research and analysis Visa and MasterCard regulations, their peculiarities and disastrous consequences in case they are overruled. Extra attention is given to the notorious MCC 5967 rule which is crucial for those who operate in high-risk online business as merchants and those who provide these merchants with payment processing services.

The book enables merchants to know what fines to expect if certain rules are broke either by themselves or their payment processing partner. It would be also interesting for adult webmasters to find out how processing companies could cheat them in the past and may try to cheat in the present. “MCC 5967: Taking the Mystery Out of the Code” may well become the handbook for every adult or other high-risk merchant and online payment services provider.

“MCC 5967: Taking the Mystery Out of the Code” is available for download here.
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