Please Welcome Electronic Payments Association (ePayments.com) To The Board!!

[Greenguy]

I'd just like to take a minute to introduce you all to Electronic Payments Association (ePayments.com)

Who is the Electronic Payments Association?

It’s the fast growing, low cost, trustworthy association for online marketers.

The Electronic Payments Association (EPA) was set up for internet professionals who were tired of slow, expensive and unreliable access to their affiliate commissions. So now we provide a cost-effective, fast and secure way for companies and individuals to make and receive payments across international borders. Membership is open to individuals and businesses involved in all areas of affiliate marketing.

The easy to use platform helps members manage their commission income efficiently, and access their funds via a members’ only ePayments Prepaid MasterCard®. The EPA also helps Advertisers and Affiliate Networks significantly reduce their costs by making multiple commission payments more economically.

The EPA is headquartered in London, and is managed by a team of experienced on-line payments professionals.

We partner with Wave Crest, a global expert in prepaid card issuing, program management, and specialised processing. We also use Swiftcom Networks for the provision and management of software applications for EPA including the website and integrated business systems.

You will all be seeing their reps posting on the board - Aline(EPA) & ePayments - I ask that all of you give them a warm welcome when you see them post

So please, take a minute to visit ePayments.com to get some more information...and maybe even get a card

If you have any questions or comments, please post them here & I'm sure the ePayments.com team will be more than happy to take care of any of your concerns.

Thanks In Advance!
Greenie

[Cleo]

Looks good, going to signup when I get back home.

[Fonz]

Welcome to the board ePayments

[mOrrI]

Helloo welcome...

Gonna check it out!

[LeRoy]

Welcome to the board ePayments.com

[ePayments]

Dear All,

Thank you for the kind introduction and a warm welcome.

My name is Mike Rymanov and I am the President of the Electronic Payments Association.

EPA team welcomes you and are happy to answer any questions you might have with regards to the membership, ePayments Prepaid MasterCard programme and any other general inquiries.

We worked very hard to setup the association and to negotiate the best possible card programme for our members, we certainly hope you will find it of great value.

EPA's support team is headed by Aline Hughes - Aline (EPA), she will be joining the thread shortly.

Once again, we appreciate your interest and feedback and hope to see you all as members of EPA.

Regards,
Mike

[Aline(EPA)]

Good day everyone!

I would be happy to answer any questions you have.

Sincerely,
Aline Hughes
Members' Support Adviser

[Cleo]

I have a question.

Does the person sending you money have to have an ePayments account or is it like PayPal where they don't?

[Aline(EPA)]

Originally Posted by Cleo

I have a question.

Does the person sending you money have to have an ePayments account or is it like PayPal where they don't?

Dear Cleo,

The eP supports per-2-per transactions. It means that a payer and a payee both need to have an eP account. However, corporate members of eP may receive wire transfers from advertisers/clients/partners directly on to their eP account.

Sincerely,
Aline Hughes
Members' Support Adviser

[ecchi]

Two questions:
1. It costs $35 to join and people cannot use the service without joining, so am I correct in assuming people have to pay you $35 before they can pay any merchant?
2. Everything appears to go through Mastercard, but Mastercard are clamping down on strong adult stuff (eg bondage), so what alternatives do you offer for the adult industry.

[Aline(EPA)]

Originally Posted by ecchi

Two questions:
1. It costs $35 to join and people cannot use the service without joining, so am I correct in assuming people have to pay you $35 before they can pay any merchant?
2. Everything appears to go through Mastercard, but Mastercard are clamping down on strong adult stuff (eg bondage), so what alternatives do you offer for the adult industry.

Dear Ecchi,

1. You are absolutely right, there is an annual membership fee of $34.95. This is to cover issue, personalization and delivery of cards to our members. This fee also covers operational and maintenance costs of our website. However, we are waiving this fee for members of this board. Please follow this link http://www.epayments.com/?i=greenguysboard.
2. In my view your question refers to MasterCards merchant acquiring side of the business. Heightened review by MasterCard of merchants offering adult content is typically due to high level of chargebacks in this industry. If the content is legal there is no reason not to process it.

Sincerely,
Aline Hughes
Members' Support Adviser

[ecchi]

Thanks for your reply, however it raises a couple of other questions, and I think you misunderstood my first question.

Originally Posted by Aline(EPA)

You are absolutely right.... However, we are waiving this fee for members of this board. Please follow this link

I was not thinking about the cost at our end, I was thinking along the lines of: If I sell something for $20 and offer the option to pay via ePayments.com, and they join to buy it, then they effectively have to pay $55 for it? I know they don't have to pay that every time, but why would anyone other than merchants sign up when it is this expensive for them to start?

Originally Posted by Aline(EPA)

Heightened review by MasterCard of merchants offering adult content is typically due to high level of chargebacks in this industry. If the content is legal there is no reason not to process it.

Umm, I don't think you understand Mastercard's current business model: Smaller dealers are banned from accepting Mastercard for the stronger but legal adult material. My current processor is fighting this on the grounds that big companies are allowed to sell the stronger stuff (eg Amazon and Barnes & Noble sell books via Mastercard that A1 are not allowed to sell via Mastercard). What are your plans/intentions on this matter?

A third question arose from your reply: I posted my question on Friday. You are based in England, so Monday was a bank holiday, and you replied promptly on Tuesday morning. Thank you, that is fine for things like this. But that would not be fine if I was your client, financial matters can often not wait 4 days. And also remember that not all the world lives on GMT (or GMT-1 in the summer), and the middle of my client's day may be the middle of our night. So do you provide 24/7 support regardless of holidays etc?

[Aline(EPA)]

Originally Posted by ecchi

Thanks for your reply, however it raises a couple of other questions, and I think you misunderstood my first question.

I was not thinking about the cost at our end, I was thinking along the lines of: If I sell something for $20 and offer the option to pay via ePayments.com, and they join to buy it, then they effectively have to pay $55 for it? I know they don't have to pay that every time, but why would anyone other than merchants sign up when it is this expensive for them to start?

Umm, I don't think you understand Mastercard's current business model: Smaller dealers are banned from accepting Mastercard for the stronger but legal adult material. My current processor is fighting this on the grounds that big companies are allowed to sell the stronger stuff (eg Amazon and Barnes & Noble sell books via Mastercard that A1 are not allowed to sell via Mastercard). What are your plans/intentions on this matter?

A third question arose from your reply: I posted my question on Friday. You are based in England, so Monday was a bank holiday, and you replied promptly on Tuesday morning. Thank you, that is fine for things like this. But that would not be fine if I was your client, financial matters can often not wait 4 days. And also remember that not all the world lives on GMT (or GMT-1 in the summer), and the middle of my client's day may be the middle of our night. So do you provide 24/7 support regardless of holidays etc?

Dear Ecchi,

Membership of the EPA is not available to general public. We only accept application from professional participants of online industry. At the moment we are developing a merchant acquiring service for our members, however, it is not yet available. With regards to 24/7 support line, it is being setup and will be launched shortly.

Sincerely,
Aline Hughes
Member's Support Adviser

[ecchi]

Originally Posted by Aline(EPA)

Membership of the EPA is not available to general public. We only accept application from professional participants of online industry.

So you are saying I misunderstood the function of your company, and that you are only there for things like sponsors paying affiliates?

[ePayments]

Dear ecchi,

We appreciate your interest and apologies if we misled you in any way with regards to the nature of our business and intentions. Let me clarify.

Electronic Payments Association is a company limited by guarantee, which in contrast to a more traditional form of incorporation - company limited by shares, does not have shareholders. This means that interests of EPA members is everything that the association cares about.

We established EPA as response to many regulatory hurdles that make cross-border commission payments either very expensive or even impossible. As the association of individuals and business driven by common goal we used our bargaining power to negotiate a superior payments infrastructure for our members. This infrastructure is regulated by the European E-Money Directive, hosted by a british bank, insured and managed by a very experienced team of payments professionals.

At the moment this infrastructure only facilitates affiliate commission payments. However, we are negotiating with a number of service providers to offer merchant acquiring services as well.

We will keep you posted on the development and appreciate your comments and suggestions with regards to possible services the association could offer to its members.

Regards,
Mike

[Greenguy]

The way I understood it was that they are like ePassporte - was I correct in that assumption?

[ArtWilliams]

Originally Posted by Greenie

The way I understood it was that they are like ePassporte - was I correct in that assumption?

Except, unlike ePassporte, they don't steal your money! Welcome to the board. I will have to signup ASAP.

[ecchi]

Originally Posted by ePayments

At the moment this infrastructure only facilitates affiliate commission payments.

Thanks, sorry for misunderstanding. I thought the same as G, that you were trying to be like ePassporte and so could be used by my clients to pay for my services.

One thing that would be useful, both to us and to you (as it would encourage sign-ups) is a list of links to sponsors who use you. At the moment none of my current sponsors appear to use you, so there is no point in me paying $35 a year for a card. However, due to the high cost of clearing US cheques outside the US (I currently pay £12, which is about $20, for each cheque I get) I would genuinely consider changing my main sponsors if I could get paid via a service like yours. (I changed 90% of them when I discovered ePassporte, and nowadays my main sponsor is one who pays by PayPal.)

[Greenguy]

Originally Posted by ecchi

...One thing that would be useful, both to us and to you (as it would encourage sign-ups) is a list of links to sponsors who use you. At the moment none of my current sponsors appear to use you, so there is no point in me paying $35 a year for a card...

From what I've been told, they "are in discussions with a number of large affiliate networks and for contractual non-disclosure reasons we can not tell you who they are at this stage. If however, you would like to tell us which affiliate programmes/networks you would like to receive commissions form we will open dialogue with them (in case we have not already done so) and invite them to join the Association"

And, seeing as the $35 fee is waived for board members using t5his link - http://www.epayments.com/?i=greenguysboard - I think of it as them having a year to get on board with some of the affiliate programs we use

So everyone, feel free to post a list of sponsors you'd like to see ePayments.com open a dialogue with

[Toby]

Is the card the only option for withdrawing funds from my eP account? What I'd really prefer is ACH transfer to my US bank account.

As for sponsors I'd like to see using eP... DDFCash is at the top of that list.

[ePayments]

EPA Members' Relations Adviser, Pari Leesa is in contact with DDFCash. Should there be any affiliate networks that you believe would benefit from EPA membership, please do not hesitate to get in touch with Pari (pari@epayments.com) and kindly put a request to the network itself. This would certainly help Pari to develop the relationship.

I would also encourage you to join EPA as all membership fees are waived for members of this board. Please follow the link http://www.epayments.com/?i=greenguysboard

With regards to ACH we are currently working on a solution to offer virtual accounts in the US as well as the UK. We will be keep you posted on the development.

As to withdrawing funds from an ePayments Account to a US based bank account, this is already possible with a bank wire transfer from EPA account at NatWest bank.

Once again we greatly appreciate your input and are happy to work together further developing the Association.

Regards,
Mike

[Simon]

I was looking at the options for signing up and see that there is a choice between an individual and a business account. I'd choose the business account option since I receive all payments from all sponsors to my company name. But the signup form assumes that if I choose the business account I must be a sponsor who has affiliates. The form asks how many affiliates my company has, and offers no option less than 1-10 affiliates while the correct answer for me would be zero. The form also wants me to tell my "turnover" in US dollars if I want a business account (which is no one's business since I'm not going to be using the account to pay any of my *zero* affiliates).

I'm sure not every affiliate operates as an individual who wants payments made to their personal name. So how does someone go about getting an account in the name of his company if the company is not a sponsor with affiliates?

[Cleo]

After reading Simon's post I just tried to signup as an individual to see if it would allow me to use my corporation's tax ID at some point but got stuck and where it asks for my Passport information. While I do have a passport, many people that I know don't have one, it's in my bank's safety deposit box along with all my other important papers. I'm not motivated enough to retrieve it since I'm not traveling out of the country anytime soon or to apply for this account which I don't think I even have a use for.

[ePayments]

Thank you for your comments. We are aware of our slightly “bureaucratic” application process and are currently working to update it.

With regards to KYC details, we do require one item of photographic identification, and as far as I understand, Tax ID does not include photo. However, you are welcome to apply using any government issued ID, such as a State Issued Driver's License.

As to the question relating to corporate applicants, you can join the association as an incorporated publisher. Under the “Category” please choose “Other” and state that your are a Publisher, keep the rest of the form unaltered.

Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience, we are updating the application process, all of the above will be addressed in the refreshed form.

Regards,
Mike

[Cleo]

Tried once again to signup.

Selected other under business. Used my drivers license number as my passport but got stuck at "The Citizenship field is required. This field should contain 6 digits."

What the hell is a Citizenship number?