[thelist] Re: Shopping Sites, Credit Cards

Keith cache at dowebscentral.com
Sun Jun 30 21:39:01 CDT 2002


At 02:17 PM Sunday 6/30/2002, Kathy wrote:

>because it seems to contradict my personal experience with the B of A
>gateway.  We recently tried to retrieve the cc number of one of our
>customers and were told, "Sorry. We don't store those numbers."
>
>I'm curious. What gateways do you know of that do that? Perhaps they are
>ones that I should not recommend.

I had a B of A shopping cart using a B of A merchant account that I used up
until 6 months ago. The credit card numbers were displayed in the admin's
sales history screen. I've never used Authorize.net. Things may have
changed in those 6 months but federal and state laws defining who owns the
transaction would have had to change also (VISA could of course do that
overnight if they wanted to).

I do hope you are right!!  It would give smaller sites using third party
gateways an advantage over sites who can afford to run their own gateways.
And a major advantage over telephone-order type sales where the card number
is of course given to a faceless voice (I smell web design
opportunities....). Please let us know what you find out. If the rules have
changed they changed to protect the cardholders and websites should be
passing that along to instill confidence.

FWIW here's a paragraph I use on my sites (a bit more than "it doesn't
matter who I am..." )

<quote>
For Your Protection: Payment for download of (REMOVED) is processed through
PayPal, the largest, most secure payment exchange on the Internet. Your
credit card number and billing information will be transmitted directly to
PayPal secure servers for authorization. Your credit card number and
billing information are NEVER revealed to (REMOVED) or it's parent company
(REMOVED) at any time. Paying for your order through PayPal makes your
online purchase as safe as using an ATM. Paying through PayPal is the
safest way to make any online purchase.
</quote>

>a nightmare because of their member login requirement and ended up with me
>giving up. What good is a secure payment processing system if your buyers
>give up trying?

I totally agree! That stupid signup crap made sense when PayPal was
strictly person-to-person exchanges. But 90% of their revenue comes from
website sales now and it makes no sense to force people to enter any extra
keystrokes when they're ready to pay. I try to diminish the consumer's pain
with the following statement next to the PayPal button:

<quote>
If you have never purchased with PayPal before you will be asked to "Sign
Up". Sign up registers your credit card number and billing information with
PayPal so you can join 16 million other shoppers buying on over 40,000
websites without having to submit your credit card information again.
</quote>


Keith
====================
cache at dowebscentral.com




More information about the thelist mailing list