For me, if I am going to refer someone to another business I need to know three things:

1. The product or service has to be great
2. The cost must be fair
3. The customer service better be outstanding

If I can find these three things in a business I refer to then, and only then, do I consider what my compensation will be.  After all, my relationships are more important than making some extra money.

This where many of the programs in my industry fail.  With some programs it’s the rates and fees (many hidden) that I just can’t encourage people to accept.  With others I know that after a merchant signs up they will be just another number with no personal touch to be found.  The bottom line is, knowing what I know about merchant accounts, I just can’t feel good sending people to most of these companies. So we at Cocard Synergy have created our own referral program; below are some the benefits:

Merchant Benefits

• Transparent pricing – cost plus our profit margin, no super low “teaser rates”
• Interchange Plus price model – no “mid-qualified” or “non-qualified” tiers
• No annual fee
• No early termination fee
• No batch header fee
• No minimum processing fee
• Assigned Relationship Manager who knows them by name
• Free authorize.net setup

Referral Partner Benefits

• Upfront bonuses up to $750 per merchant
• Monthly residual income equaling 20% of our profit

It works very simply, just fill out the referral form here and we take care of the rest.  Then every month the check shows up in your mail box.  I know this is nothing new but we are very exited about it.

Another “Why” Behind This Program

Each week I receive emails and calls from sales people looking for a job.  They are from all over the United States and typically have some experience with merchant accounts.  We could be like every other merchant account provider and hire them as agents. Just put them under contract and let them go.  The problem with that is that we don’t know who they really are.  Do they share our values of transparency and exceptional service?  Will they be honest?  Will they represent our company the way we want to be?

I have been down this road before; hiring sales people who I don’t know and I learned the hard way that is not the path to go down if you want to build a great business.  So we have decided to only hire sales people we know personally or who are referred to us by our clients.  What his means is we have chosen to grow primarily through our referral partners. Here is a list of some of the reasons we chose to go this way:

• We are accountable to our referral partners; if we do not deliver our business will not grow
• We can focus on doing what we do best – serving businesses and managing their merchant accounts
• We are able to control what type of service all our clients receive
• We can build a community of clients and referral partners who can benefit one another
• We can have much more fun – partners, community, new clients, all good!

So now you know all about our referral program.  If you have questions feel free to comment below or contact me directly.  If you want to sign up and join with us just click the button below.

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Not too sexy is it? If you go with Cocard Synergy you would save a whopping $41.40 per year. It’s a good thing that is not where the savings stops! When we compare the merchant accounts offered by both companies the savings jump up.

As you can see from the chart above the Base Discount Rates differ greatly. Freeauthnet.com uses tiers for their price model, Cocard Synergy uses “straight pass through.” If you do not know the difference between these two price models check out this short video that explains it all – What is Straight Pass Through.

Because I do not know what freeauthnet.com charges for their "mid-qualified" and "non-qualified" tiers I cant figure out the price difference. What I can tell you is it is extremely rare a tiered rate program is cheaper than a straight pass through program. On top of that Cocard Synergy does not have any of the following:

• Minimum monthly fee
• Annual fee
• Early termination fee

Again, I am not sure if freeauthnet.com has any of these fees or not. However, typically when a company chooses to give their customers tiered pricing they have all three of those fees.

Bottom Line: I believe Cocard Synergy has the best free authorize.net program available in the market place today. If I am wrong please leave a comment and let me know; I always invite opposing opinions on this blog.

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iPhone Credit Card Terminal Application

Update: March 16th, 2010

Since I wrote this post much has changed with the iPhone and the programs and hardware are available to work with it. This is also true when it comes to merchant accounts. As a result I have founded another website that focuses solely on merchant accounts for the iPhone. I invite you to check us out by clicking the link below:

iphonemerchants.com

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So lets say you process 200 transactions a month and you keep your account for 12 months, how would these two offers differ?

See what I mean? If you take my free authorize.net offer I make an extra $232.40! The problem is you pay an extra $232.40.

So maybe you are wondering where I am coming up with the free authorize.net numbers. I’ll tell you where from – www.freeauthnet.com. Their gateway and transaction fees are right on their website.

You also may be wondering if I am being serious about offering free authorize.net and I am; however my transaction fee will stay the same as it was originally which is $.05 after the first 250 transactions. Yes the gateway fee will be the same as freeauthnet.com but I am paying the setup fee out of my own pocket so I need to make sure I at least break even. On the other hand, if you want my original offer you are free to choose that as well.

Oh there is one other thing you will not receive if you sign up for my “free” authorize.net account, that is a merchant account with hidden fees inside the famous tiers of “mid-qualified” and “non-qualified.” In other words we will set you up with a straight pass through merchant account.

I wrote this to show you that when the word “free” shows up in any marketing, at least in the merchant account industry, that is code for “your overall cost will be much higher than if you just paid for what you were receiving”. This applies to free terminals, gateways and anything else that has a real cost to it. So beware of the word “free” and use your brain to figure out what the real cost are. If you’re lazy and just want the easiest path to take, contact me and I’ll get you your stuff for free and I’ll let you know what “free” is going to really cost you.

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I have previously written on this blog that the weakness of authorize.net was their customer service. I believe I even mentioned 30-45 minute hold times for customer service calls. Well I know this call was only a single experience with them but they sure seem to be moving in the right direction.

Thank you Brian of authorize.net you did a good job today!

Note: I feel I need to note that my company is an authorized reseller of authorize.net.

Update: I had three more calls to authorize.net for this particular client of mine; each of them also went well. On one call the authorize.net agent, Irwin, was on the phone with us for over 30 minutes and ended up fixing our problem. So now I have a total of four calls that confirm what I wrote above – that you can expect quality customer service from authorize.net.

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-Some of these Third Party Processors specialize in running and hosting networks of Point Of Sale (POS) terminals connected to their Host via dial out modem; they produce the software in the POS terminals as well as in their host, and route authorization requests to Visa or MasterCard as needed (MAPP, MDI, FDR, for example).

-Other Third Party Processors specialize in the Settlement of credit card transactions with Visa and MasterCard so that merchants can be paid (FDR for example).

-In the world of Internet Credit Card Processing, the Secure Payment Gateway Provider, such as authorize.net, is another type of Third Party Processor.

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By John Robinson

It seems like everyone’s using the internet these days to run transactions. Even brick-n-mortar businesses are using web-based software with USB magnetic strip readers, making their laptops into swipe terminals.

As fantastic as that is, it can confuse even the most sophisticated internet geek when something goes awry. Who should you call?

I just jumped through a bunch of hoops to fix a problem caused when a merchant didn’t realize their gateway wasn’t their processor. (If you are wondering what the difference is, I’m getting there! ) A batch failed (something that happens on occasion), probably because of a single, corrupted transaction. The merchant called the gateway, who offered to resubmit the batch, and then promptly resubmitted an already successful batch from a different day.

The result? A bunch of annoyed customers who’d been double-charged, chargebacks for the merchant (that we’ve since refunded and stricken from the record), and the merchant didn’t get paid for the failed batch. Sadly, the gateway probably wouldn’t have been able to identify the faulty transaction, as that’s a processing thing, much less fix the problem, and didn’t refer my merchant back to me.

This has all been fixed now, but as you can imagine, it was a bit painful. This was the worst issue I’ve dealt with regarding this misunderstanding. But I’ve talked with plenty of people who should know better who didn’t know who the processor was versus who their payment engine was. Even after multiple explanations.

It became clear this article needed writing.

Authorize.net , PC Charge , PayFlow Pro , CyberSource , etc., are not credit card processors; they are payment gateways.

The payment gateway is responsible for taking the card information and the transaction information and sending that over a network to the acquiring bank. When the acquiring bank gets its okay to authorize the transaction, they send that information back to your gateway, which then tells you it’s authorized.

The simplified analogy: Whatever you’re using to take payments, it functions as a terminal. Yes, some software has all sorts of things that are far more functional (recurring billing, detailed reporting, exporting to other software, etc.) than a terminal. However, ‘processing-wise’, it’s just a terminal.

To call them rather than your processor for authorization and settlement issues is a little like calling your terminal’s manufacturer. (Yes, I’m being blunt here, but it’s important to remember.)

I’ll save the differences between gateways and PC-based engines, etc., for another post. Or maybe Robb will beat me to the punch. My point here is: Once a transaction has asked for an authorization, problems with that transaction are now a processing problem, and the processor is usually not the creator of the payment gateway.

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Go here and fill out the form and they will send you and e-mail link to a .pdf version of the report.

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Statement Confusion

What I found interesting about these two statements was how difficult they were to comprehend. On the cover page of the statement, in bold letters, there is a summary statement that reads "TOTAL CHARGE TO YOUR ACCOUNT IS…" The amount that was shown on both statements I analyzed equaled about half of what the business actually paid. Then when I reviewed the summary of the types of transactions my confusion increased. Now I review merchant account statements for a living and I’m confused? So how is a business owner or an account supposed to decipher this stuff?

Options

The good news is that there are a few solutions for businesses that desire to run their credit card transactions through Quickbooks. The first is from a company named Skipjack . They have developed a plug-in you can download and install on your computer. Once installed the plug-in produces a payment window(see below) from within Quickbooks for you to enter your transactions. What this means is you can pretty much use any merchant account provider and still enter your transactions through Quickbooks. Go here for more details on this product.

The other option is from authorize.net . This is the most popular online payment gateway for small to mid sized businesses in North America. They do not allow you to run transactions from with in Quickbooks but they do provide the ability to download your transactions and upload them into your ledger.Both of these options charge a monthly gateway fee and a per transaction fee. However, those fees become insignificant when you realize how much money your business can save by getting out of Quickbooks merchant account jail.

Take Action

So if you want to use Quickbooks, maintain an accurate records of your credit card transactions and lower your merchant account fees what should you do? Go ahead and take a look at the websites I have linked to above and then give me a call . I will answer any questions you may have and then analyze your current merchant account and show you how much we can reduce your fees by. Go ahead take some action – the jail door is wide open. You are free to leave!

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