I was curious about your payment processor since you're working as a marketstyle service. For reference on a project I'm working on, were there any hurdles to getting such an account? Also, how do you plan to handle chargebacks?
Give it a shot with some test creds (see below). You can go live directly from the site: https://balancedpayments.com
# create a test marketplace
curl -X POST https://api.balancedpayments.com/v1/api_keys
# retrieve and store the secret for subsequent commands
curl -X POST https://api.balancedpayments.com/v1/marketplaces -u $SECRET:
http://blog.gittip.com/post/25565694263/how-not-to-get-acqui...
I migrated to Stripe, who have an awesome product, but they asked me to leave because I'm running a marketplace and that's outside their bank agreements. I was casting about for options when Balanced came along and offered to contribute the integration with their product. They've been very respectful of Gittip as an open community and its turning into quite an interesting relationship. Hoping to do a write-up on the blog soon.
Truth be told I still have it in mind to vault cards over at SpreedlyCore or something like it just to be safe, but I haven't been able to prioritize that yet.
Edit: Apparently there are some staff bios on the Community Page. Founded 2010. Is anyone familiar with other start-ups using them as well?
It says that because it is not an EV SSL certificate. go to amazon if you want to see the same message, but from a verisign (non EV) cert.
this is a certificate that only validates the full domain name but has no info about the company: http://www.thawte.com/ssl/ssl123-ssl-certificates/index.html
this has also the company name inside the cert: http://www.thawte.com/ssl/web-server-ssl-certificates/index....
and this is the Extended Validation one: http://www.thawte.com/ssl/extended-validation-ssl-certificat...
Tipically the price of this certificate grows from one type to the other and also the required documents/paperwork changes (if you register a simple fqdn certificate many times the procedure is completely automated, if you register a certificate with the company inside, or an EV cert, you must send relevant documentation about your company)
Having said that, I would expect this kind of businesses to have at least a certificate with company details inside, or better an EV cert..
The site seal with a popup that includes the company details is not what me nor the op are referring to.
https://www.balancedpayments.com/community
That page was put up in the past week or so, and the whole thing was rebranded from PoundPay a month or two ago--right about the time I started talking to them. Here's an etherpad where a lot of our initial conversation took place, with some additional background and info:
I've worked with 3 different merchant account providers over the past 8 years. All of them, in the end, ended up costing more than twice the rates they originally quoted when I applied. Downgrading most cards to higher fee schedules, having a dozen fees 3rd party processors simply build into their flat rate, and the ability to raise rates every month for years can add up to a very high effective transaction rate.
PayPal, once you pass $10000/mo for the 2.2% tier, is currently my cheapest processor when you factor in all the processing, gateway and monthly fees. I still accept credit cards directly for various reasons, so I'm trying to move off directly storing cards in Authorize.net's CIM to a service like SpreedlyCore that will let me switch merchant account providers without losing my current customer billing info.
2. Read your contract. First Data (and every other processor I've ever dealt with) gives 30-days to withdrawl from the contract when they send their notice of rate increase.
3. Did you look over the interchange matrix first data gave you? It's pretty clear on what you need to submit to receive the qualified rate.
4. Authnet gateway? I like their gateway too... but it's an added and unnecessary expense. First Data has a gateway that you can get them to include for free (although you will have to do your job and negotiate for it).
5. authnet CIM? For a few thousand dollars in hardware, you can store the card data yourself... unless you're dealing with a small number of transactions, you're going to have to do this anyway.
Yes, I know dealing with credit card processing is a pain.. but the above? You're just tossing money out the window.
Of course, the fact that Balanced is contributing significant code and momentum to Gittip also has to be accounted for.
I've got a conversation going with Braintree to get another "real merchant account," but with Balanced contributing code, and Braintree only half the solution (still need ACH), and getting burned by FirstData ... what's my incentive?