Praise for ProPay, Good Grief!

For those of us who are no longer doing eBay, ProPay has come up with the coolest gadget I have seen in years. The days of lugging around a three pound weight credit card scanner for point of sale charges are over!

Are you working craft fairs, flea markets, sales parties or shows? Check this out. Full disclosure, I gain no financial benefit from telling you about this whatsoever.
The MicroSecure Card Reader. Is that cool or what?


It is a secure, encrypted, portable card reader that comes with a lanyard and USB cord. You simply swipe the card, the green button lights to tell you everything is copascetic, record the name, amount of charge and last 4 digits only of the card in your duplicate receipt book, hand your customer their receipt and move on to the next sale. You can store 71 transactions at a time. When you get home, plug the Card Reader into the USB port on your computer, login, your transactions will appear one at a time. Enter the amount of the transaction and an optional invoice number. No more entering card numbers and hoping you got them right.

If you have an internet connection and computer available, the reader processes and authorizes real time transactions.

How secure is secure?

From the look of it, very secure indeed. The device stores and encrypts the data and is fully compliant with card-association security standards. If it gets lost or stolen the information is still secure and can't be decrypted without access to your ProPay account and using the ProPay software.

And the price tag is?

Amazingly low. Did I just say that? Hmmm.

Regular price $149.95 with a $4.95 service fee per month. Pay that fee annually up front and it drops to $39.95, a year. There is an introductory price on the device of $99.95 and service fees are waived through 2008 (better than a swift slap upside the haid!) If you buy more than one you will not be charged more than one monthly service fee. No contract, no termination fee and you can sell the device (with some restrictions) if you no longer need it.

There are of course the normal merchant credit account fees in addition to the card reader service fees.


Back in the day I paid over $200 for my reader and $75 a month, with a one year contract. I had to lug carbon paper forms, be connected to electricity and a phone and most of the time input the transaction more than once.

I am really impressed. I don't often say that.

Y'all come back!

A Message From ProPay

Red Ink Diary was honored yesterday by a visit from Brandon Crotts of ProPay who left a comment on my post about the two new payment processing options for eBay sellers. Long time readers will remember Brandon from my post about ProPay vs PayPal in late August.

Thank you Brandon for posting. Here is the question I asked the (very nice) ProPay CSR

I am a silver powerseller (I am not but it was a rhetorical question) and in January due to failure to maintain volume I loose my PS status. What happens?

The answer I got was that on review I would be offered a different plan tailored to my seller status at the time.

From this I wrote in my blog "Are you comfortable with the possibility of losing your payment processor if your PS status drops and/or paying increased fees?"

I am curious to know in what way I "had it wrong", if Debbie and Brews are "right" your implication is, I had it wrong.

If I loose my PS status my rate does not change?

Image courtesy of www.hedweb.com

As an ex-eBay seller I am very familiar with the carrot and stick concept. As a low GMV seller I would be the recipient of the stick, you would recognize me by my shaggy gray coat and very large ears, which hear very well by the way.

What I hear is not something I like. It is not in any way wrong or abnormal in business. It is a fact of life that the more you consume or purchase, the better deal or discount you get. That doesn't mean I have to like it!

As I stated in my response,

ProPay have worked very hard to come up with a plan for eBay sellers which should be mutually advantageous and is infinitely superior to what they were offering earlier this year.

The ProPay eAuction plan is a special deal directly tied to seller status on eBay. If on evaluation you no longer qualify, either because of DSRs, (losing PS because of one below permitted level) or volume you will have to move to a different plan.

I stand by my post. That is something every well brought up donkey knows how to do.

Onward.

My business is about 30% export, or cross border. ProPay does not, at this time, offer an international payment processing facility. I have been told that ProPay has excellent customer service. From my very minimal experience with them this is true. I am pleased and delighted that ProPay were able to come up with a viable alternative to the PayPal stranglehold on eBay sellers. I sincerely hope that ProPay will continue to work on producing an even more comprehensive service for ALL established eBay sellers..


Y'all come back!







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PayPal Competitive Offer? Yes, but . . .

This week the policy change requiring all payments on eBay to be electronic takes effect. The press release from ProPay.com October 7th made it clear that ProPay would be no alternative to PayPal on eBay for any sellers below Silver PowerSeller status. Quote from ProPay's website:

Currently, the ProPay eAuction account is exclusively for US-based eBay Silver, Gold, Platinum, and Titanium PowerSellers.

Smaller sellers or sellers who have higher volume with low Average Sales Price (ASP) items are used to only seeing the stick from eBay. All the carrots this year have gone to PowerSellers. Now lower level PowerSellers are losing the carrot. Once again while all are equal, some are more equal than others.

A second press release dated October 19th states ProPay's transaction rates are scaled to PS status:

• Silver -- 2.7% and $0.30 USD per transaction


• Gold and Platinum -- 2.4% and $0.30 USD per transaction

Titanium level sellers are encouraged to contact ProPay direct to set up custom transaction fees.

I have one major question for the seller who plans on using ProPay.

Are you comfortable with the possibility of losing your payment processor if your PS status drops and/or paying increased fees?

Quietly, with very little fanfare from PayPal labs comes an interesting new offering designed for processing micro-payments. The formula is the familiar decrease on front end with an adjustment in the percentage rate. Also familiar is the confusing language and charts to explain terms. The transaction fee drops to 5c from 30c and correspondingly the percentage rises from 2.9% to 5%.

The tipping point, or transaction size at which the micro-payment plan costs more than the regular PayPal plan is $12. Payments under $12 will save on the micro plan. See the chart here.

The drawback is that you have to choose between the micro-payment program and a regular account. This program might be of value to sellers who are

• (a) willing to go through the hassle of opening a second PayPal account which requires a 'fresh' credit card that does not appear on your main PayPal account, and
• (b) are able to split their business into total transaction under $12 and the over $12 transaction groups with separate payment processing.

Remember that for PayPal it is the total transaction being processed that pays fees, including shipping, not just the sale price.




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ProPay vs PayPal

Red INK Diary has moved, click here to go to this post on the new site and enjoy much more updated content!

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Yesterday I got what I consider a spam comment from Brandon at ProPay. According to my posted spam policy I have deleted and reposted the comment, minus link. For future reference Brandon, hiding your Blogger profile and failing to leave contact information gives you and ProPay serious credibility problems with me.

ProPay as you may know is the beard (One who serves to divert suspicion or attention from another - American Heritage Dictionary) eBay suits have donned in hopes of avoiding lawsuits or deflecting charges of violating the Sherman Antitrust Act, Sec.5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act, and Sec.7 of the Clayton Act which regulates exclusive dealing contracts, tying agreements, or requirement contracts.

Brandon wants you to know

"Right now we only offer a merchant account but at the end of September we will be announcing a new special account for our eBay customers. ProPay will charge a small yearly fee, but will provide several services and we will help our customers fight against fraud."

Isn't that nice?

I am sure that eBay has non standard merchant processing requirements for ProPay to fulfill in order to be allowed on eBay. Sellers will be told what ProPay has to offer on eBay right at the start of holiday shopping season. Would I use an untried payment processor at that time of year? In one word, no. Exactly what PayPal wants.

I do not believe at the present time ProPay is competitive with PayPal for smaller sellers. For web stores ProPay expects the seller to manually input the credit card information, this incurs a security burden I would be unwilling to assume. Further it would discourage my buying from any site using ProPay.

According to the ProPay EFT Agreement a merchant agrees;

As part of this agreement, you irrevocably authorize ProPay to debit your Checking Account for any fees, payments or penalties you owe or may owe ProPay relating to ACH or Intra-ProPay transactions. You authorize ProPay to initiate reversal or adjustment entries and initiate or suspend such entries as may be necessary to grant you conditional credit for any entry.

Gosh & WOW! That sounds worse than PayPal!


The company seems confused as to exactly what charges apply to the various levels of service. On this page Premium is shown as having an annual fee of $29.95 with 3.25% + 35c per transaction and processing limits of $500 per transaction and $3000 per month. Earlier this morning Premium was $59.95 per annum and Basic was 34.95.

I was unable to find any reference to international transactions and four telephone calls to the PR department during the course of the business day netted me voicemail. Here is a little quick comparison chart.

Once again eBay is comparing bananas to pineapples, just because they are both yellow they hope you won't notice. Looks more like a lemon to me.

Y'all come back!




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Yes we have no bananas!