Open 'letter' To Payment providers

[cliffski]

I know a lot of them lurk here. here some thoughts, and stuff I've recently come to realise. I've used RegSoft, RegNow, Plimus and BMTMicro, so I've tried a few.

This is how you get Indie game developers to choose YOUR service (in my opinion, obviously ): These are NOT in priority order.

1) Good commission rates. Obviously the lower the better

2) FAST order processing. All delays are bad. The customers email us within 10 minutes, after an hour they are fuming. after 12 hours, we probably lost a customer for life.

3) Good order-form customisation. Ideally we can edit html directly ourselves. if not, make it easy and fast for you to make the changes.

4) Features. We want stuff like decent reporting, ability to send follow up emails, coupons etc. Let us have options on everything.

5) ZERO hassle for the customer. Keep fraud checks purely to orders that really need them. Do not phone the customer, as this freaks them out.

6) Minimal order forms. Any data that isn't ESSENTIAL shouldn't be collected. make it quick, simple, clear, easy. No opportunity to get frustrated or change your mind.

7) Payment options. If you don't take paypal, forget it. Ideally you integrate google checkout, Amazon and as many as possible.

8) Fast customer service. If I email your service and I don't get an email back in 12 hours, You lost my business. Ideally you have an address just for vendors, and reply within a few hours.

9)Sensible refund policy. Check with the vendor before issuing a refund.

One final point. AFAIK, not a single payment provider right now has integrated the new open Amazon one-click payment system into their setup. This should in theory mean that anyone on earth with an Amazon account can do one-click ordering of our product.. If it really can be made to work like this (without any more order form stuff required than that) then the first payment provider to implement this will trash all competition.

Thoughts?

[Frozen In Ice]

I'm sure you've said this more eloquently but...

One page ordering and the customer receives the product. Too many providers have two or three pages for the customer to complete before the sale is final. That results in many potential customers saying the hell with it. I know I feel that way when I'm asked every question under the sun over the course of two or three pages, which you've already touched on and unless I really want the product, I just give up and go elsewhere.

[Maupin]

Knowing Plimus their computer probably spent those 24 hours trying to call you.

[lakibuk]

I've got 2 wishes regarding internationalization:

1. Localized order forms (especially german)

1. Payment option: wire transfer to german bank account! Many germans don't have credit cards and they won't send money to an US account.

Anyone know a provider with this option (only one i know is Shareit) ?

[Jack Norton]

BMT has wire transfer to german bank accounts. BTW with paypal spreading so fast, I think that options is almost useless now.

Fact: of ALL my sales through BMT in 4 years, less than 1% choose Deutsche Bank (Wire Transfer).


As for what cliff says - I agree on that 100%. I want just to add that international wire transfers should be REASONABLE. That is, not $50 which BMT charges to us europeans (plimus charges less than half!).

[Indiepath]

As for what cliff says - I agree on that 100%. I want just to add that international wire transfers should be REASONABLE. That is, not $50 which BMT charges to us europeans (plimus charges less than half!).

Odd that, eSellerate have never charged for a wire transfer EVER!

[Jack Norton]

That's because eSellerate has ACH payments in several countries including UK, France, Germany, etc. Takes 1-2 days max and 0 expense. Rules.
Think about having payments sent monthly, and you see that this apparently small fee become a realy pain (12 x $50 = 600 usd wasted a year). Also is really annoying knowing that with a minimal effort on their part (just opening another bank account to ANY european state) they could do like eSellerate and use ACH too, to get faster payments with 0 expenses for us...

[jcottier]

One of the forumer keep saying this (can't remember who):

We should be able to choose to send the download link immediately. Even if the payement hasn't been greenlight by anti-fraud check. It is better to send the game to a frauder than anoying legit customers.

I agree with that.

JC

[Pogacha]

One of the forumer keep saying this (can't remember who):

We should be able to choose to send the download link immediately. Even if the payement hasn't been greenlight by anti-fraud check. It is better to send the game to a frauder than anoying legit customers.

I agree with that.

JC

And when pirates realise this?

[jcottier]

Well, the ultra obvious fraud order will be remove without even being checked by a human person (as they are already done now). We are talking about the order that might look slightly suspicious and get delay or phoned home to check if legit.

Personaly, I don't care about pirate finding that. They already pirate my games the minutes it get released on a major portal anyway. My little protection seems effective enought. Casual pirates are not real pirate, they only know how to hack portals DRM.

Anyway, I said we should have the option. If you don't want it, you will not tick it.

JC

[magallanes]

how many frauds are versus legal credit card?



Today i did buy a software ($1500),choose between master/visa/other insert credit card number, insert (in)secure code, expire date and name and i received the code instantly. So why is so hard to buy a <$19 game using credit card?.

[Pogacha]

If I were in the USA I would consider to start an E-Commercer Provider Business for Indie Developers.

I'm OK with the "demands" translated on a wish list, however I think if they haven't done that maybe it is because it can have some difficulty on implementing them ...

[DanFromFastSpring.com]

Dan from FastSpring.com here. I thought I'd take a moment to address some of the issues discussed.

Our team built RegSoft and RegNow, we've been customers of most every other e-commerce provider in the space. Through that we've seen so much of what the problems are. That's exactly why we built FastSpring, to introduce a fresh alternative for the industry that addresses the issues of dissatisfaction related to gaming and software e-commerce.

1) We charge 5.9% plus $.95 or 8.9%, your choice. For many, this is a reduction from what they've paid in the past. This pricing includes the full service, including a Dedicated Account Manager.

2) Order emails are sent immediately, there are no delays. Orders are processed in real-time, as our fraud screening occurs in real-time. We've had a lot of gaming vendors come to us after having bad experiences with other providers who utilize other methods such as manual fraud screening, and some have reported sales increases of 10-20% mainly due to our system processing far more of their orders. Does that mean we have a high chargeback rate because we process so many prospective orders? Nope, our chargeback rate is excellent, well under 1/2 of 1%.

3) We offer great order-form customization. Some elements are easily editable, for more complex stuff we're always happy to do the work for you if you have any trouble. Here's an example of a pretty customized order page:
http://sites.fastspring.com/sammsoft...stryoptimizerb
Here's another, less complex, yet customized one:
http://sites.fastspring.com/nextup/product/textaloud
Our system is extremely flexible, it's made to do what you want, and that goes for today as well as idea you come up with in the future, it's highly configurable and adaptable.

4) You can see our features at:
http://www.fastspring.com/services.php

Our reporting is visual as well as textual, it's pretty slick. If you watch the demo on the homepage, click Reporting to see it in action. Lots of options options , coupons, etc. We support more currencies than others, including settlement in Yen, Pound, Euro, CAD, AUD, etc.

5) See #2 - our fraud checks are real-time and more of your orders get completed. We do not phone customers or use other manual methods which lead to fewer completed orders. We want to complete as many orders for you as possible.

6) Our order forms are pretty minimal. See a few for yourself:
http://sites.fastspring.com/getsafensecure
https://sites.fastspring.com/astersoft/instant/indexman
http://sites.fastspring.com/nextup/product/textaloud
http://sites.fastspring.com/thoughtf...tilecreatorpro
http://sites.fastspring.com/sammsoft...stryoptimizerb

If there's a field you want to remove or change, at times we can make the change for you, just let us know what you have in mind.

7) Paypal and all the standard payment methods are accepted. We have not yet added support for Amazon or GC.

8) More than anywhere, customer service is where we excel. Each game or software vendor is assigned a Dedicated Account Manager who always replies in 24 hours, though often in just an hour or two. You've never experienced customer service like ours, as we say on our homepage. If you don't believe me, try us and you'll see. We treat our customers like gold.

9) Yes, refunds, as in most everything with our service, are in your control. We don't refund your customers unless we have your permission. We fight chargebacks on your behald and we fight hard, as we pay any chargeback fees when we lose, provided your chargeback rate is standard.

To address some comments from others...
- We have a few different options for order page setup. You can select to have all order info collected on a single page, on multiple pages, utilize a shopping cart, etc.

- Our order pages are localized, and we can pay you via PayPal, check, ACH, international wire, or even Payoneer debit card. We try to give our vendors as many options as possible wherever we possibly can.

I hope this information has been helpful.

- Dan

---
Dan C. Engel, CEO
FastSpring
Email: dan at fastspring.com
View the Flash Demo at: http://www.fastspring.com/

[Acord]

What about payouts etc? It ticks me off when $40 sits there forever because I have to wait for another copy to sell. Share-it doesn't even pay out any leftovers at the end of the year, a major downside IMO.

[cliffski]

Thanks for the reply dan, very interesting indeed.

[Jack Norton]

- Our order pages are localized, and we can pay you via PayPal, check, ACH, international wire, or even Payoneer debit card. We try to give our vendors as many options as possible wherever we possibly can.

Can you tell us what are charges for wire transfers payments to europe? or ACH to european banks (if you support that)? thanks

[Jim Prior]

Just a quick question to anyone, If a payment service is Java based(as in the case of FastSpring) would that pose a problem for people using non-java based systems. I'm thinking here of the low spec end of customer PC's as I've heard Java can be a problem(slow) for these low end users.

maybe I have the wrong idea on this, but is it only my payments/download server that would require Java installed or would each customer have to run Java to use a system like FastSpring to pay me? Is this even a possible issue?

Like a few here I'm very interested in this company as they seem to fix many of the issues I've seen discussed here re on-line payment solutions.

[princec]

Just a quick question to anyone, If a payment service is Java based(as in the case of FastSpring) would that pose a problem for people using non-java based systems. I'm thinking here of the low spec end of customer PC's as I've heard Java can be a problem(slow) for these low end users.

maybe I have the wrong idea on this, but is it only my payments/download server that would require Java installed or would each customer have to run Java to use a system like FastSpring to pay me? Is this even a possible issue?

Like a few here I'm very interested in this company as they seem to fix many of the issues I've seen discussed here re on-line payment solutions.

2 things: 1) Java runs just fine even on very low end systems and 2) it has absolutely nothing to do with FastSpring

Cas

[Jim Prior]

"FastSpring's Java platform overcomes issues of growing complexity and maintainability that plague legacy e-commerce systems. Unlike other systems, FastSpring is architected from the ground up to be extremely flexible, adaptable, and configurable. No other e-commerce provider can adapt to changing client needs as quickly as FastSpring. Our order pages' extensive customization and merchandising capabilities often result in significant increases in our clients' revenue." - from their website? So I presume you must have Java installed to use it?

But if Java runs fine on low end systems(P2 500's etc) then my question is moot.

[Bad Sector]

Eh, Java doesnt run only on client side but also on server side. Check the example sites above, nothing loads the JavaVM. But the URLs remind me of those in Java-based sites, so i can only assume that Java is used server-side.

I don't know why they feel the urge to advertize what they use in their servers, though :-).

[princec]

Eh, Java doesnt run only on client side but also on server side. Check the example sites above, nothing loads the JavaVM. But the URLs remind me of those in Java-based sites, so i can only assume that Java is used server-side.

I don't know why they feel the urge to advertize what they use in their servers, though :-).

Java's pretty well known for being rock solid, scaleable and secure on the server; at any rate rather more trustworthy than some Hax0rr McL33ts PHP based ecommerce site.

Cas

[TMK]

Dan:

Fastspring sounds very interesting. Is there any chance of being able to output the registration information on the last step of the ordering process, in addition to sending it out as an email to the customer?

The reason for this is to give the customer the best experience and give them their registration details right after a purchase, as I've often experienced that customers don't receive their registration email (e.g. email being marked as spam, entered incorrect email address, email bounces for whatever reason), and they get furious as they think they are getting screwed over since they don't get their registration information...

This is the only thing at the moment that's holding me back from switching to Fastspring

[Sybixsus]

I would just reiterate what TMK said, except that I don't have anything to sell at the moment.

[goodsol]

We switched to FastSpring earlier this year from RegNow and it has gone very well. Everything Dan says is true.

I can't quantify exactly how many more sales we've been getting since switching, but sales are definitely up. Not only are fewer orders blocked by FastSpring for fraud at the time of the order, but RegNow has this annoying habit of refunding orders for "fraud" days or weeks later (these were not chargebacks, they just sometimes decide an order is fraud after the fact). FastSpring does not do this. FastSpring's chargeback rate does not seem to be any higher than RegNow's (in fact, it seems lower).

Customers not getting their emails is problem for everyone - that's a problem with email itself.

As for Java, I believe the Java is used only for their backend vendor platform, not for the order pages themselves. They do use Amazon's E3 service for some things, so when that went down (as it famously did earlier this year), their vendor platform was down and you couldn't log in. But the order pages were unaffected and orders still came in. But Amazon isn't going to go down very often.

Their customer service is great, you get a fast response with any problem. Of course, I'm a little biased as I've known a couple of the people at FastSpring for 10 years from their time at RegNow and RegSoft.

One other thing, if a user goes to their order page and leaves it, FastSpring pops up a contact window asking whether the user has a problem (I believe this only works if the user has scripting on). If the user fills it in, it generates an email to the vendor. I usually get a few of these a day, it gives another way to get users to contact you.

[Jack Norton]

Well, I'm going to open an account too. I need to try new things The fact they charge a NORMAL amount for international wire fees ($15) is already a good start.
I'm starting to have enough to pay $50 with BMT...

[Jack Norton]

Just got an email from BMT. Apparently it's their bank that charges so much. But they promised me to change the wire transfer fees starting from next week!

Straight from their email (which got permission to quote):

At any rate, BMT Micro will be competitive with other registration services so I will be lowering our wire fees this week even if we have to absorb some of the costs ourselves.

...thumbs up for BMT

[princec]

Yep, I got a personal reply from BMT too, which is great news Must be why I like 'em so much!

Cas

[DanFromFastSpring.com]

To address some of the feedback and questions...

For international wires sent to the vendor, we charge $15. Our actual cost per wire is approximately $40. We eat the difference because we think paying $40 is too much to pass on in full. There is no charge to the vendor to get paid by us via check, US wire, or PayPal. If you want to use Payoneer, there are some small charges associated with that. Those charges get paid to Payoneer, we do not mark up their costs.

At present, we do not support post purchase web based registration presentation, but that will be addressed in the near future.

If a vendor is paid by PayPal, the minimum payment can be set as low as $10 if desired. If paid by international wire, the minimum required in commissions owed to the vendor for a payment to take place is $100.

We do the store setup work for you (unless you desire otherwise) and we design a branded order page to match the look and feel of your site at no cost to avoid any disconnect your customers would otherwise experience if they click your buy link and the resulting page doesn't blend with the rest of your site.

- Dan

---
Dan C. Engel, CEO
FastSpring
Email: dan at fastspring.com
View the Flash Demo at: http://www.fastspring.com/

[cliffski]

This just in from BMT:

I just wanted to let you know that effective today I'm lowering our wire
fee to $12.50. I haven't talked with our bank yet but since I've
already took the hit I'm sure I'll be more forceful negotiating with our
bank.

Also.... I have been trying really hard to compare all the different fee
structures other registration services and my eyes glazed over pretty
quick. I think, rather than trying to come up with yet another
pricing option that looks great but is just the same fee wearing
different clothes I'm going to say:

BMT Micro will match any offer by any other registration service. Just
email me directly at tbrad@bmtmicro.com to start the process.

Due to the 48 hour posting delay on the Indie Forums I can't post this
but feel free to pass it along.

[Bad Sector]

Does BMT support payment to vendors via PayPal? I didn't found anything related to their site (i prefer to have a single place where my money goes).

If a vendor is paid by PayPal, the minimum payment can be set as low as $10 if desired. If paid by international wire, the minimum required in commissions owed to the vendor for a payment to take place is $100.

Very interesting. However your site says:

You have the option to be paid by FastSpring through check, direct deposit, PayPal™ or wire (for payments outside the U.S.). Receive your payment every two weeks.

does this imply that for payments outside the U.S. only wire is available or is just an example and someone outside the U.S. can use PayPal too? Its probably the wording (since i don't see why limit PayPal inside U.S. only), but i would like this to be clarified.