Offshore Merchant Accounts

[ADAM Web Design]

I've never had to go this route before, so forgive me for what seems to be an ignorant series of questions, but I really have no clue how the offshore merchant account game works.

Anyway...I've got a client that has been turned down for a merchant account in Canada because of a credit issue. He can't go Stateside since he's based out of Canada and has no US physical presence or bank account.

So...right now, we're looking at offshore alternatives.

The requirements would be as follows:

The ability to host pages ourselves with an ASP-based API to work with (or does this even apply with offshore stuff?)
Visa/Mastercard
The cheaper the better, but reliability is the big thing

My questions are as follows:

1) Apparently Romania is the big country for this sort of thing. Is this correct? Or is it even really country-specific?

2) The API question...do offshore providers work like PrayPal in that they host the pages themselves?

3) Who exactly are the "players" in the offshore industry? In Canada, it's BeanStream, Internet Secure, and not really much else afterward that I'm aware of.

To summarize, I'm looking for a combination of recommendations and insights into offshore merchant accounts.

Thanks.

[krisidious]

why does this client not use paypal or click bank or one of those?

if he does not have the where with all to do that? he should think about putting someone elses name on it.

[ADAM Web Design]

He's using PayPal. The problem is twofold:

1) His site's in Spanish, whereas PayPal is in English. This is turning away customers in a BIG way.

2) PayPal is only accepted in 45 countries, and he's getting requests from all sorts of places.

He wants to get an offshore merchant account partially to rebuild his credit rating (show he can pay for it and stuff) then turn around and approach either a merchant bank or a payment processor and say "hey, look, I've completed $XXX in transactions with Y% chargebacks and I've paid on time like a good boy for 8 months. Now, can we talk?"

I'd be willing to look at a PayPal alternative en Espagnol, as long as it was relatively customizable and the company itself is bilingual in English and Spanish (since my knowledge of Spanish consists of "dos cervezas y ron, por favor!")

[newmarket]

I would recommend that you tread carefully. Like everything there are a lot of scams out there. Stay away from Romania!

I think that if there is a credit issue that is going to cause a problem anywhere. That being said, you could have a look at worldpay - they're the biggest and probably most reputable (a division of the Royal Bank of Scotland). They also do multi-currency and multi-language.

I wouldn't rule out the US. Have a talk to merchantaccounts4less, I'm pretty sure that they can help (although processing would only be in USD).

Other options are forcetronix, wirecard, and well -- there a few other reputable companies in Europe, but I can't remember them right now (PM me if you want me to find my notes).

The only other option is to look at third party processors, but again I recommend caution particularly after the paysystems thing last year.

If you would like have a look at 2checkout and moneybookers. There are lots of them out there but not many that I trust.

I hope that this is some useful information, but I want to strongly point out that 'offshore' does not mean that the banks and credit card companies are more lax. If anything the opposite is true, since you are also offshore to the legitimate processors making it more difficult to re-cover money from you.

I've been through all of this several times, so if you need any more advice, please feel free to let me know!

[bjbtexas]

Here is some info on highrisk and offshore accounts:

http://www.higherrisk.com/

[searchquest]

You could attempt to speak to a company that has access to financial institutions that set up merchant accounts.

PayPal, World Pay are 3rd party processors, not the route a company of any size wants to utilize.

[William Briar]

Try "Swiss American Bank" Antuiga WI,

[netace]

There is no requirement to use English language buttons (you could use Spanish text or custom buttons), and as long as the product or service descriptions are in Spanish there should be no proble. PayPal accepts several different currencies. They are far less costly than StormPay, ClickBank, 2CheckOut and most others.

While WorldPay supports European Spanish, this is NOT the same as Mexican Spanish, and far from Brazilian Portugese, and the setup is much more difficult. With poor credit, PayPal is very definitely the best bet. None of the payment systems that I'm aware of support Mexican Pesos, except http://www.mexican-gold.com and I'm not sure how solid they are.

[rominosj]

2checkout.com has an option in Spanish, you just have to ask them how to set it up.
Cons with 2co is high 5.5% they take from you.

[rominosj]

2checkout.com has an option in Spanish, you just have to ask them how to set it up.
Cons with 2co is high 5.5% they take from you.

[newmarket]

Originally Posted by netace

None of the payment systems that I'm aware of support Mexican Pesos, except http://www.mexican-gold.com and I'm not sure how solid they are.

I wouldn't recommend this site. Looks more than a little dodgy. For South and Latin American currencies and processing have a look at epagos.com. I've never used them, but it looks good.

You can customise the language payment pages at worldpay.

[espectations]

Hi,

I have a similar problem - in this case we use Moneybookers and Paypal but there are countries where the governments did not join the International fight against fraud and that is why these countries are not on the Moneybookers and Paypal lists.

Worldpay is just too expensive to start out with for smaller businesses and in South Africa and I believe Worldpay withdrew their service about a year or two ago.

I will look into some of these solutions mentioned. In Africa I also have clients from Djibouti and smaller countries that want to pay per credit card...small clients but a lot of small clients build volume at the end of the day.

I believe that chargebacks are the biggest problem with credit card payments.

[newmarket]

Originally Posted by espectations

Worldpay is just too expensive to start out with for smaller businesses and in South Africa and I believe Worldpay withdrew their service about a year or two ago.

I do seem to remember that Worldpay stopped working with South Africa sometime last year. I know that it's 3PP, but have you tried 2checkout? I know that they take merchants from the middle east and think that they handle South Africa.

Another European based acquirer is Multicards. I do believe that you will need a EU based subsidiary, but that isn't too hard to pull off.

[espectations]

Yep, they actually discontinued on 5 January

I also am looking into Setcom and will be doing a comparison of countries covered between Paypal, Moneybookers and Setcom.

I think with all three services we would be able to achieve something - I will check out the options mentioned by you as well - many thanks - or maybe I should join the braindrain and just leave the country (LOL)

It is hard when one wants to do honest open business but governments and regulations stop one from conducting such honest business - and that most likely due to a couple of dishonest people. We are having a lot of that in South Africa lately........

Just for reference this was WorldPay's notification:

"Withdrawal of WorldPay Services for Mexico, South Korea and South Africa.

Over the past few years the environment in which we all operate as businesses
has changed quite markedly. Economic conditions have become more uncertain and
new regulations have come into force which affect global e-commerce and
e-payments. These include the main card scheme rules from Visa and MasterCard,
which govern the way we do business outside of the European Union (EU). These
rules demand that in order to continue our business in any country outside the
EU, we must enter into an agreement with a local bank.

WorldPay have given careful consideration to these regulations and to our
presence in all markets outside the EU. Regretfully, compliance with these
regulations cannot be achieved economically for customers in all regions and it
means that there are some countries and markets from which WorldPay must
withdraw.

We are sorry to have to inform you that your business is based within a country
where we can no longer offer our services, and therefore we are sending you
this email as 60 days notice of termination of your account. Your account will
be closed on 5 January 2005.

[espectations]

2Checkout does not allow the sale of sms credits which is the business I am in.

Also interestingly they do not accept travel related services......

Fascinating.....

I am looking at Setcom - maybe between Setcom, Moneybookers and Paypal we could achieve something

[DaFraze]

Hello All,

Some companies will not use PayPal when they wish to purchase a product. That's equally so for other intermediates. Creating an account with a 3rd party in order to pay somewhere else isn't normally seen as the way to go. Instead, an Internet payment service provider (offshore merchant account) is probably the easiest route. Sure, it's a little more expensive, but then, they do offer the facility to do a decent credit card validation and have a proper online sales procedure. My suggestion is to look at either banks in US/Canada or companies in Europe for this. Although you may be able to find good alternatives in Romania or other countries, the security of banks and financial institutions throughout Europe is monitored. It's safe. Setting up an account digitally, without speaking to an actual person of such Internet payment service provider is a no-no. But that's common sense to me. It's business, it's money, it's how you make a living: that's not something to start messing around with just like that. The percentage these companies use may seem high, and in fact I agree that mostly they are overcharging, but then, if it limits fraud risk and offers you decent support and technical maintenance, then the price is worth it. There are numerous European alternatives that also provide localized services, incl. in Spanish. One example: Bibit. It's a Dutch company, offering worldwide support. Benefit is that Europe has many countries and many different languages. In order for them to do business they have to support these languages. And they do. I'm not saying Bibit is the only one or the best, but it's just an example. Best thing to do is to contact many of those Internet payment service providers and have them send an offer for their services. Ask them about the languages, about their way of implementation and their technical support. And most important: ask them about how they handle fraud risk and security. Ultimately that's what it's about: if you pay a lesser percentage that saves you money every day, but your security is at risk and you get a few charge backs (or worse) because of it, you may have less money in the end.

Hope this helps.

[ADAM Web Design]

Originally Posted by netace

There is no requirement to use English language buttons (you could use Spanish text or custom buttons), and as long as the product or service descriptions are in Spanish there should be no problem.

I guess I should have explained this part more clearly. The buttons on the site itself are in Spanish. The problem is that the user gets transferred to the PayPal site, which is in English. The combination of the English-language pages and the number of countries that don't accept PayPal are just killing buyer conversion as a result (I've built a tracking mechanism into the site for this specific reason).

Anyway, I'd like to thank whoever made my question the featured topic on WPW (I certainly wasn't expecting it when I checked the board this morning!) and all of you who took the time to answer. I'm going to be going through all the information in greater detail tonight, but if anyone's got any more information or suggestions, hey, keep 'em coming!

[compusolver]

2checkout.com has recently gone south in a big way - and I don't mean the Spanish-speaking kind of "South".

There's a discussion thread about ikobo.com at:
http://www.crystaltech.com/forum/top...TOPIC_ID=10351

You might check that out.

[newmarket]

Originally Posted by compusolver

2checkout.com has recently gone south in a big way - and I don't mean the Spanish-speaking kind of "South".

I had heard that Ikobo has stopped their 'merchant' offering. Is this true at 2co as well?

[espectations]

After investigation I also found out that both Setcom and 2 checkout.com have limitations on the products that one is allowed to take payments for:

Airtime, calling cards or PIN or phone calls, SMS, SMS credits or any telecommunication products are not allowed.

I think I am in for a tough time finding a way to take credit card payments online.....

[dEdy]

Take a look at ikobo.com

[dEdy]

Take a look at ikobo.com