Authorize.net Questions

[pinkie]

Am currently using PayPal and would like to add Authorize.net to my site. Here are a few questions:



1. I understand I need a merchant account along with authorize.net, and that e-junkie is an option. I thought a merchant account had to be a financial institution, like a bank. If I go with e-junkie, are you the ones that process my credit card payments? Or where do you fit in?



2. I looked at the authorize.net reseller site and don't see your name on there. Are you still offering this option?



3. Is it possible to go directly through Authorize.net or do they only work through resellers?



3. Regarding fees: Authorize.net charges $20/month plus .10/transaction then a batch transaction. I'm assuming this is in addition to what the bank charges?



4. Where do I get the PCI compliance authorization?



Thanks.

[E-junkie_Guru]

First, this help page explains how to integrate Authorize.Net with your E-junkie service:

http://www.e-junkie.com/ej/authorize.net-shopping-cart.htm



1) E-junkie is not a bank nor payment processor and does not handle any actual payment funds at any point. To use Authorize.Net, you would need to have or establish a separate card merchant account, which you could have with your regular bank or any online-specialist merchant account provider.



E-junkie only provides services for the pre-checkout (shopping cart, purchase buttons, product management, etc.) and post-checkout (thank-you emails, download delivery, posting order data to an outside URL, etc.) phases of the ordering process, and for Authorize.Net checkouts we also provide a secure checkout page where the buyer can enter their info, which we simply transmit to Authorize.Net via a secure channel for authorization of their payment into your merchant account balance.



2) We're not clear what "option" you mean by looking for us as an Authorize.Net Reseller, but our Reseller link is on our Authorize.Net integration help page (linked above).



3) You should be able to just sign up with Authorize.Net directly, but of course we'd prefer if you used our Reseller link, so we'd get a cut of your Authorize.Net fees rather than just letting them keep it all. :^)



3) You would need to contact Authorize.Net for any questions about their fees or how they interact with your bank or merchant account.



4) We can provide a PCI Compliance report for our service via email upon request:

https://www.e-junkie.com/ej/contact.php

[pinkie]

So basically e-Junkie acts solely as a reseller of Authorize.net? If so, what are the benefits of going through you guys versus A.net directly?



I'm also not 100% clear on the merchant account's role. I think I may be confusing Reseller with Merchant Account.



I could go with Authorize.net's merchant account program or via my bank. Are there any others you suggest?



As for PCI compliance, the credit card companies require merchants to have this, and am wondering where to get the approval for this.



Also, we need a secure server. How do we go about doing this?



Thanks.

[E-junkie_Guru]

Clicking through our Reseller link simply tells Authorize.Net to pay us a commission for referring you to them, whereas we get nothing from Authorize.Net if you go directly to their site to enroll, so of course we'd prefer that you follow our link, but that's really the only difference. :^)



A 'merchant account' is just a special type of bank account that allows you to accept credit card payments directly into that account. This is unrelated to our being a Reseller and Partner with Authorize.Net, and unrelated to any other accounts you may maintain with other services for other reasons, such as a PayPal account or your E-junkie account. Your choice of merchant account provider is your choice; as long as they can work with Authorize.Net, it's entirely up to you.



You should not require your own secure server, nor an SSL certificate for your domain, nor PCI compliance, because you are using E-junkie as a "hosted" e-commerce provider which is already secure and PCI compliant, and we can provide our most recent PCI compliance report upon request via email. You would only need your own secure server, SSL encryption certificate and PCI compliance auditing if you were using "licensed" e-commerce software that gets installed on your own server to run there on its own, which is not the case with E-junkie.



While the buyer is using our cart service to shop for items on your site, the order they build in their cart is completely anonymous, as no personal, financial nor other sensitive data is being exchanged at that point. When the buyer proceeds to checkout to pay with a credit card that will be processed using your Authorize.Net service, they are taken to a secure checkout page that we generate for you on our server, and we handle transmitting their private/financial data to Authorize.Net via a secure channel for you.

[pinkie]

Thanks for the explanation.



Great, so I don't have to worry about storing buyers' credit card info. That's great. I take it then, you are considered SIM (new term I learned today).

[pinkie]

Meant to ask...what if I take credit cards over the phone? Do I need any type of security approval?

[pinkie]

Thinking out loud...



Would I be better off going with PayPal Pro? I already have PP Standard. I don't want my buyers to have to see the PayPal logo if they opt to pay this way. Some of my buyers don't want to use PayPal, which is why I want to give them the option.

[E-junkie_Guru]

If any buyer's card info is being stored, it would be in your account records at Authorize.Net's end; we do not store any card account data at all, and our secure checkout page only provides a place for buyers to enter their card info for us to encrypt and transmit directly to Authorize.Net without retaining a copy at our end.



I'm not quite sure what you mean about SIM, but we are SAAS ("software as a service", similar to in contrast to licensed software that you get a copy of to install yourself), and our service is already pre-integrated with Authorize.Net. We've done all the hard "nerdy work" for you, so all you'd have to do is follow our instructions to provide the information we'd need to link your Authorize.Net account to your E-junkie account, and you're done!



Authorize.Net may offer you a "Virtual Terminal" service that would allow you to take card info over the phone and validate that manually on your computer. This would not involve us at all, so you can consult Authorize.Net help pages or support staff for any questions you may have about that.

[pinkie]

Just want to make sure we're on the same page. Since I use e-junkie, then I do not need an additional PCI compliance certificate? It all goes through your PCI certificate?



Also, I've been looking at PayPal Website Pro and it says I would need the help of a developer to install it. How complicated is this and since I have e-junkie do I still need a developer?

[E-junkie_Ninja]

That is correct, you will not need your own PCI compliance certificate.



If you are going to add in PayPal Website Payment Pro, all you need to do is follow the steps on this help page:

http://www.e-junkie.com/ej/paypal-partner.htm

[pinkie]

I got my payment processor all set up. I have to say - you guys made this process seamless. Thank you!



A couple of more questions:



1. Where can I get the credit card icon that shows Visa, MC, AMEX, etc? PayPal only has the one that has the PayPal attached (for when I only used PayPal Standard) and I'd like the one without it.



2. Are there any trust seals we can put on our website? I see the GeoTrust and McAfee on the checkout page. Can we put these or something like these to generate confidence for buyers? Or are these strictly for the checkout pages?



3. I'm assuming the above-generated seals are generated by e-Junkie?



Thanks.



--Paula

[pinkie]

Also, I see on the checkout page it has a box to check to sign up for newsletter/special offesr. I have my newsletter through Vertical Response. If buyers click this box on my checkout page, where will the information go? Can it be redirected to Vertical Response?



Thanks.

[E-junkie_Guru]

You can use any generic credit card logo images available on the Web, e.g.:

http://www.credit-card-logos.com/



Security seals are typically only used on the actual secure pages where sensitive data is being requested or transmitted, and they are designed to be "live badges" that the user can click to verify and view more information about the particular security measure represented by the badge, which won't work on other pages. If you're using PayPal Pro, or Authorize.Net with PayPal Standard, it would also be misleading to, say, place a copy of our GeoTrust badge on your site, since buyers who choose to checkout with PayPal would be using PayPal's secure site and would not even be using our GeoTrust-secured card checkout page at all.



The opt-in checkbox on our card checkout page controls whether we add the buyer to your Buyer Group lists for the item(s) they purchased:

http://www.e-junkie.com/ej/help.updates.htm



If you were using our Aweber integration, that checkbox would also determine whether we submit the buyer's info for subscription to your Aweber mailing list. We do not have any particular integration method for Vertical Response, but if they can accept PayPal IPN, they may be able to receive our IPN-style generic Integration submissions, but these could not be controlled by the opt-in checkbox:

http://www.e-junkie.com/ej/help.integration.htm

[pinkie]

Thanks for the link on credit card logos. What you're saying about trust logos makes perfect sense. Was just wondering.



Newsletter integration looks a little complicated. I'm not clear on where the subscriber's name goes when they check the box. Is there a way to see who clicked and would like to receive my newsletter? This way I could add them to my Vertical Response list. I'd hate for them to click, thinking they'll receive a newsletter, then they don't get one.



Also, on the list of buyers, what do the pink highlights mean?

[pinkie]

I noticed on the credit card logo sites, you have to copy/paste a code that goes to their website. I don't like doing this and was hoping for just the image. Know where I can find this?

[E-junkie_Guru]

You don't have to use the code they provide; you could just right-click on a logo you like and "Save image as...", then once you've saved it, upload the image to your Web site and add it to your page.



If buyer opts-in, we add their name/email to a Buyer Group list we maintain for each product they ordered. You can view these Buyer Group lists we maintain for you by logging into your Seller Admin and then visiting this link directly:

https://www.e-junkie.com/ej/viewmailing_list.php

(you may want to bookmark that until we can add a link for it in Seller Admin)



The pink highlights in that Mailing List admin indicate buyers who have been removed from your list, either because of a payment refund/reversal, or because you removed them yourself, or because they clicked an opt-out link in a newsletter you'd sent them through our system.



From the Mailing List admin, you can download any list view to a file on your computer, which you can unzip and open in any spreadsheet program such as Excel or (free) Gnumeric. Then you could, say, sort the rows by Status primarily and Date secondarily, so you could pick opted-in buyers (those with Active status) and see who joined your list most recently, so you could add them to your Vertical Response list.

[pinkie]

I clicked the link you provided and am seeing my list of buyers, but don't see where it shows whether or not they opted in for my newsletter. I see those that are active, but does this mean they also opted in for my newsletter?



Vertical Response only allows me to add names if I have their permission, so knowing if they clicked the box on your checkout page to receive newsletters and offers would give me that indication.

[E-junkie_Guru]

Yes, "Active" status means they are active subscribers to your Buyer Group, so they have opted in to join your list. Note that PayPal provides no way to opt-in/-out, so those buyers are always opted-in by default.



If you wanted to consider using Aweber instead of Vertical Response, you could import your current VR list to Aweber and have us submit new buyers to Aweber automatically, and Aweber would send new subscribers an opt-in link to confirm their wish to subscribe.

[pinkie]

I really like Vertical Response and want to stay with them.



I'm still a little unclear. I thought all the buyers on the list (from the link above) are those that made a purchase, and not necessarily those who subscribed to my newsletter.



I guess I don't see how they all are automatically signed up to receive my newsletter since they have to check a box if they're interested. Is there a way to see if they checked that box?



Thanks.

[E-junkie_Monster]

It depends on what payment processor you use. If you are using PayPal standard, there is no opt-in box at checkout and buyers are automatically added to your list. But if the buyer went through a different checkout process which included an opt-in box, then they will only be added to your list if they did check that box.