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Your college definately has a merchant account then. One more
question for you: Do you need to take live online authorizations, or
could you simply get the card numbers & forward them to the
accounting office for manual entry? I suspect that sending the
numbers to the accounting office would make everything far simpler &
easier. If you're expecting a thousand payments a day, then that's
probably not the route to go, but.... It would be a ton easier than
setting up & dealing w/ CyberCash.
You will need to check w/ your bank to make sure they'd allow that.
You'd also need to make sure everything is stored encrypted &
accessable only by appropriate people.
Hope that's helpful.
Best regards,
Zac Bedell
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Willy Ray [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Thursday, October 05, 2000 11:31 AM
> To: CF-Talk
> Subject: RE: Slightly Off-Topic: Credit Card Wackyness
>
>
> Well, I'm at a small college. I'd like the students to be
> able to pay tuition, fees, etc. w/ their creditcards over the
> website. The accounting office has a swiper unit that they
> use at the cashiers window. Would that be a "Merchant
> Account?" Do I need to figure out with them how that works,
> then talk to the people that they have that through?
>
> >>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 10/5/00 8:38:50 AM >>>
>
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> *** Signer: Zachary S. Bedell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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> > Alright, so I got the SSL working, and I'm pleased with that,
> > now my head is spinning with the possibility of credit card
> > usage on my little higher-educational website (I'm tired of
> > doing job boards, admissions applications). I have no idea
> > what I need in order to do this. Do I need some credit card
> > hardware? Some sort of networkable swiper box? Can I do it
> > with just cold fusion and an I.P. address? Babe in the
> > woods, here, people.
>
> Oh boy... Here's a question w/ no easy answer...
>
> There's about a million & one ways you can do credit card
> processing.
>
> First question: Do you have a merchant account with a bank, or do
> you think you can get one easily (IE: established company w/ good
> credit rating & in good standing w/ the bank)?
>
> If the answer to that is NO, then you'll need to user one of the
> various services that provide full credit card billing w/o the user
> needing a merchant account. I'm not sure whether you're selling
> site access (or other intangibles) or if you're selling a product,
> but
> that would affect your choice of processors. This type of
> processor will charge you a mint for their services, but they might
> be your
> only choice if you can't get a merchant account. They also usually
> add additional fraud detection systems which are EXCEEDINGLY useful
> for membership-type sales. Some places to start looking:
> www.ibill.com, www.ccbill.com, and a sh'load of others I can't
> think of off the top of my head. IBILL has been our best bet for a
> while now. We DO have a merchant account, but the reduction in
> fraud w/ IBILL's fraud detection and negative database has MORE
> than made up for the 15% cut they take for their service.
>
> If you do have or can get a merchant account, you'll likely want to
> look at processing the cards through your own account. That way,
> you'll probably end up paying minimal fees (3-5%) and perhaps a
> small per-transaction fee ($.10 - $.35 per charge).
>
> Now... Simply having a merchant account doesn't magically get you
> Internet CC billing (bummer...). You'll need some software to pull
> it off... CyberCash seems to be a popular choice. Depending on
> your bank, the CyberCash transactions fees might be covered for
> you,
> leaving you only the 3-5% bank cut. Our bank covers the CyberCash
> fees for us.
>
> That said, I haven't been too thrilled w/ CyberCash personally.
> I'm especially displeased w/ the ColdFusion options for accessing
> the
> CyberCash servers. On CyberCash's side, Address Verification
> Services (AVS) are frequently unavailable even for cards that I
> *know* support AVS. That makes it tougher to control fraud.
>
> As for the ColdFusion software, it's kind of a mess... CyberCash
> doesn't actually supply CF tags or anything of the sort. They give
> you a COM object, but the amount of supporting code to drive the
> COM is pretty heavy. That code is available in Perl, C, or ASP,
> but not CF. Porting it would NOT be fun... There are a number of
> CyberCash tags available from third parties. Allaire & ONCR both
> make tags. Allaire's only does authorizations, not batch
> settlements, and it's not thread safe (CFLOCK is a MUST!). Version
> 3 of the ONCR tag seems to leak memory during auths, but it does
> handle batch decently. It WILL occasionally crash however. That
> leaves your batch in an
> unknown state & requires much manual intervention & cursing to
> straighten things up. That happens perhaps once every two months
> or so. ONCR does have a version 4 available of their tag which
> they
> claim is much better. I'd give it a try if not for the $ticker
> $hock....
>
> Even with all those caveats against CyberCash, I feel it's the best
> solution available if you have a merchant account. I'd certainly
> be interested in others' experiences with other processor software,
> tho!
>
> Hope that was at least helpful. I can provide more detailed
> information about either IBILL or CyberCash when you decide which
> route you're going to take.
>
> Best regards,
> Zac Bedell
>
>
>
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