How to become a Payment Processing?

Hi,

THis has buged me for many months, and I really want to know.

How do you become one?

Is there somthing to do with Law?

IS there anything else I'd need apart from a website, script, and a secure server?

Many thanks and rep givien to people who help .

 

It is a tough one. I don't know exactly all the problems that might occur but here are the some.

You will need a foolproof system, some of the best servers, Customer care department, foreign exchange setup. etc.

Yes maybe a team of very good lawyers.

 

Yea....without good experience, its not easy to do it.....needs vast knowledge about international laws and rules..

 

Need proper documentation, license and good backup capital. Anything around $10 million at least.

 

lots of documentation and local registrations and international laws. Mostly money laundering law.

 

I'm assuming that you would be referring to a 3rd party processor like 2checkout, paypal, moneybookers, etc.

There would be a few steps involved in doing this. You would first need to register with Visa and Mastercard and a sponsoring bank. Since you are accepting payments for other people, you would need to go to a non-US processing bank, and see what they can offer. (There may be a US bank that can set this up, but I've never come across one.) You basically are looking for a processing bank that can provide services for 3rd party processing, or aggregating accounts. These types of accounts will allow you to accept payments for other people.

The problems start when actually trying to get this setup. Offshore banks have very high fees, especially for aggregating accounts. On top of that the initial entry cost is extremely high, and you would need to have very solid financial backing to get something cheap enough to actually be viable for a business.

As far as the business itself, you would need the technical capability to build bullet-proof electronic systems, and be able to handle the transfer of money, especially if you allowed P2P transfers. This would be an enormous cost barrier, as your system needs to offer 100% up-time, needs to be fast, and needs to be 100% secure.

P2P transferring are where Paypal and most other 3rd party processors make all of their money. They pay nothing to transfer money between accounts on their own platform, so every time you pay 2.5% or whatever to receive money from another account with an existing balance, it's all profit to them.

If you actually want to pursue something like this, I would start looking for companies that allow aggregating. You may also try contacting First Data: http://www.firstdata.com/. They have their hand in the majority of every transaction in the world.

 

I googled it,


result: stay away from hassles. 4% fees is better than that.

 

You can become an ISO if you wish, there is about a $10,000 Visa registration fee. And some companies will help you do a lot of that yourself and take care of the customer service.

Start small, become an agent of an ISO, learn the ropes and build yourself up.

 

I was started this type of business, but i give it up.

 

you need a big investment for that and hardworking team, there are laws, it dependents where are you located and country name.

any way you cant get ready code for the process.

 

A great example of this is Google Checkout, their PCI compliance expired on 28 Feb 2006 and they have not renewed it. There is a lot that needs to be done and thousands of things that need to be maintained

 

Hey,

The question about becoming a payment processor is not simple. It will most likely take years and almost endless amounts of money to become one, website, script, and a secure server are not the only things you need. The software you need is complicated and does not come cheap. The demands for such a entity are very high and building a rep takes time. It can be done, this is not to discourage you but just be aware that it is a time and money consuming activity.

 

Infact it is fairly very simple (I don't mean that you do not need to shell out many, you need to spend a whole lot)...

1) Get yourself a Merchant account and a Internet Merchant Account (hence forth IMA) from a good Govt. Bank in more than just your country. Strike a deal with them so as in such a way that they will you give you bonus for every IMA you refer them (new IMA signups are obvious to be your customers).
2) Ask the bank for all their routing numbers, such as Swift Code and what not.
3) Buy yourself a processing terminal, this is a hardware. And most Banks will provide you with this.
4) Hire or outsource software dudes to sync the processing terminal with your website. Now it is very obvious that you will need to get that script developed yourself (no, never use the commercially available ones, there is a reason) and secure to the maximum extent possible.
5) Get multiple servers around the globe and secure/harden them (AstalaVista.net-> Good Security Auditors, including me )
6) Advertise, you should be knowing this since you are dp member
7) Let the money come in!

Estimated Cost: $2000+

Now to maintain your business, thats a totally different issue! You need to shell out nearly $15000+ every month. Layers, security auditing, room for more expansion and all such bull shit.

 

I don't think this is in any way legal, unless you specifically setup an aggregating account. Apart from that, there would be significantly easier methods of doing it, like a payment gateway.

 

Of-course you will have to get legal consent from your Govt. and make sure you do not break even a single law, even intensionally.

 

This sounds nice, true. But it is just not as easy as that You need to be approved by the credit card companies, have all kinds of paper work and there are all kinds of obligations as well. Trust me, it is not easy, I know what I am talking about as I have done this. It has taken almost four years to get the payment processing up and running.