When I’m reading industry mags like Xbiz, Cybersocket, etc. I notice several ads for payment processors other than “the big four”: CCBill, Epoch, Verotel and Zombaio (or maybe that should be “the big two and two others”). Netbilling is one that comes to mind… can’t think of any others at the moment but I’m sure I’ve seen several.
From being in this biz and before that a porn consumer for many, many years I don’t think I’ve ever come across one gay site that uses a payment processor other than the four I mentioned, yet Netbilling and the rest are all still around and advertising heavily so someone must be using them.
Can anyone here think of a gay site that does not use CCBill, Epoch, Verotel or Zombaio? Are the “lessor known” payment processors mainly used in the straight porn world and if so why?
I’m pretty sure that to use Netbilling a site needs to have their own merchant account, which aren’t easy to get. Netbilling does not offer third-party processing like CCBill and Epoch.
So while Netbilling may seem like a “lesser known” processor, they actually aren’t … they’re pretty big. We just don’t see them a lot because most porn sites don’t have merchant accounts, can’t get them or can’t afford them.
And if a site does use them, they have to manage their own charge back ratios instead of falling under CCBill’s, for example.
We used NetBilling for all our affiliate programs for years, I really like them! We had them setup as our primary (using our own merchant account) with Epoch & CCBill as secondaries. I would hazard to say that most sites that have their own merchant accounts use NetBilling, so I bet you are already using them without actually realizing it!
Speaking of other billers, there are a host of alternative billers that specialize in their own niches which you are probably using wthout knowing either. For example, we used GXBill for phone billing and WebBilling for Euro direct debit, as do quite a few other programs.
The great thing about NATS (and other 3rd party affiliate programs) is that you can manage your billers independently of the affiliate program, and that results in more sales!
If you are using your own merchant account the big 3 “gateways” are Netbilling, DHD and Rocketgate. All the others (CCbill, Epoch, Segpay, etc.) are primarily IPSPs.
Thanks for the info. I always thought it was impossible for a gay porn site in the U.S. to get a merchant account and did not realize the difference between a CCBill or a Netbilling. Now I know!
[QUOTE=msm;112624]Thanks for the info. I always thought it was impossible for a gay porn site in the U.S. to get a merchant account and did not realize the difference between a CCBill or a Netbilling. Now I know!
:)[/QUOTE]
No it’s not impossible. They treat it like any other business.
