VeriSign Question

[Young Teck 06]

Okay, haven't been on here in a while and needed some help and I may sound stupid for this but I was looking at the Payflow Pro by VeriSign and I am liking it. I see that it is only $59.95 a month and the first 1000 transactions I take it must be free or something and then each additional transaction is .10 each afterwards. Let me ask, is this good?

I am also thinking about adding the Fraud Protection Services Advanced Package as well as Account Monitoring and Buyer Authentication which is a simple $130 a month, not including the transaction fee's.

I think this sounds good and with the extensive marketing planning that I have planned out, including SEO and advertising with multiple partnership sites and an affiliate program to begin this Fall, and the prices of the apparel and sales most likely will cover the $130 hopefully.

I am still debating though, I may use Monster Merchant Account at first, think I should?

At the same time I am going to purchase an VeriSign SSL Certificate later for $1,790 for 2 years, but for right now its the "Start Up" plan, which will be the Monster Merchant Account and GeoTrust PremiumSSL. But VeriSign is the future of my urban apparel store, what is some idea's to ensure trust and authenticity?

[Corey Bryant]

Ah this is where you mentioned the PayFlow Pro :) - anyway, you can get the account for a lot cheaper than $59.95 a month and yes yu are correct about the 1,000 transactions. Other gateways, like LinkPoint, is about $15.00 a month with no extra transaction charges.

As far as their fraud package - it is very good. I would recommend you first take a month & see what happens. If you check the IP address, and a few other things, yuo should be fine. It all depends on exactly what you are selling

[Young Teck 06]

I'll be selling urban apparel and shoes, high priced clothing including the exclusive authentic Evisu ..... which is like $250 per jean.

[Young Teck 06]

Also, do you have to be 18 to register because I am only 16 and will not be 18 until July 2006. How can I bypass and still get with VeriSign, as well I am running an sole-proprietor business.

What else do you know about VeriSign that I should know?

[bcheath_1]

Young Teck 06,

If you have all this spare change lying around, why don't you go ahead and incorporate your company? You will save a lot of money not having to pay self-employment taxes.

That's something you ought to consider.

Not saying it will, but currently if your company flopped, you are personally liable. The bank will come pick up you car........everything. If you are running a corporation and it flops, only the company is liable. The bank can claim company assets, but that's it.

The legal system could possibly "pierce the corporate vail" and make you liable, but that is only likely in the instance that the corporation you are in charge of commits fraud.

B Rad

[Corey Bryant]

You will have to get your parents to actually get a merchant account and an electronic payment gateway. You have to be 18 to sign those contracts. Heck, you cannot even get Paypal even.

As far as your products - what you really have to watch out for is people asking you for 20 of them and they want them shipped overnight. These are usually the fraud cases. A high amount of volume that is needed soon. They rely on American greed to hopefully not check those things

[Ted S]

As Corey Bryant said, fraud is more an issue of being greedy then of being tricky. If you keep your eye out for simple things like fast shipping, mismatched avs or cvv codes, billing and shipping addresses that differ or ip addresses that trace to a country different than the ordering country, you have a bad sign. You can also look for duplicate orders by customer id or by ip address, free email addresses and a whole hsot of other factors. I've actually developed a simple fraud point system for a few clients which is tailored to their specific customers. While it looks fancy to the client the simple truth is that we are merely looking as indicators that they can see themselves -- if you pay attention to whose ordering and what their order information is, you can cut out the vast majority of your fraud before it costs you money.

[Young Teck 06]

Thanks again for the tips and I will add them to my list to verify shipping and such. So if they don't match or such then I'll just decline the order totally and the account will be removed, no excuses.

As for being 18, I am not sure if my mom or dad would do it but I am on my friend's account for accepting PayPal, he's 19 so it should be valid.

Lastly, I need me an account so hopefully my mom or dad will help me work with it.

Completing this post, I am a sole-propreitor and the business is only online and with the fraud protections, the chargebacks should save me some risks and such, but my other friend, his sister is an accountant, I can get her to help me somewhat on the site.