Can someone with first hand knowledge of industry help me find answers to the following questions? 1. Who are best companies to work with to get a merchant account for adult websites? Merchant account should be based in Europe/Asia preferably. 2. How much is it supposed to cost to have it set up? 3. Why chargebacks is such a big deal when webmasters are paid after 2-3 weeks anyways (net 15)? Any outstanding charges can be deducted from next check. 4. Any recommendations and other tips and tricks?
Many starting adult websites are using CCBill as their processor. They got some fee's which you should check at their site.
I don't have first knowledge of this industry, but ccbill is the largest that I know of. As for the other questions that I can answer. Cost can be very expensive. I've heard of several offshore providers charging several thousand just to get setup. There may be a hefty reserve as well. Fees will most likely range from 5 - 10%. Chargebacks are a big deal because the customer has 180 days to file a chargeback with their card issuer. The typical timeframe on chargebacks that a persona makes in almost any situation, is about 3 - 6 weeks after a charge when they are reviewing their statement. This extends the liability to quite a lot longer than a 2 week hold. The 2 week hold is to protect the processor from merchants doing fraud. It's most likely only designed to pretect against a merchant that runs a bunch of stolen cards and tries to take off with the money. These chargebacks typically happen much quicker than the 3 - 6 weeks described above. Apart from this. Visa/MC limit the number of chargebacks a business can receive to under 1%. When a business breaks this limit, they impose fines and can shut them down completely if they get too high. Chargebacks are a reasonable measurement of customer satisfaction. Visa/MC assume that if a business is getting more than 1% of their purchases charged back, they are doing something wrong.