{"id":302,"date":"2009-11-10T04:35:49","date_gmt":"2009-11-09T18:35:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sketharaman.com\/blog\/?p=302"},"modified":"2009-11-22T23:46:31","modified_gmt":"2009-11-22T13:46:31","slug":"comparison-shopping-for-alternative-payments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sketharaman.com\/blog\/2009\/11\/10\/comparison-shopping-for-alternative-payments\/","title":{"rendered":"Comparison Shopping For Alternative Payments"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"pru_pic03_150w\"<\/a>Many Americans might find it increasingly difficult to get, and hold on to, credit cards in the wake of the recently passed The Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure (CARD) Act of 2009. To attract such people to becoming their customers as also to avoid losing those of them who are\u00a0their\u00a0existing customers,\u00a0online merchants and web-based businesses are exploring alternative payment methods that bypass credit card networks and operate using ACH, TELCO or private EFT networks.\u00a0\u00a0Paypal<\/a><\/strong>, eBillMe<\/a><\/strong>, Mazooma<\/a><\/strong>, Bill Me Later<\/a><\/strong>, Boku<\/strong> <\/a>and Zong<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0and a raft of other APMs have further stoked the interest of merchants with promises of lowering processing costs, increasing ticket sizes, boosting conversion rates and reducing fraud.<\/p>\n

\"LOGO_PaymentsRUs\"<\/a>Merchants wanting to learn more about alternative payment methods might find the singular focus of traditional comparison shopping sites like CreditorWeb<\/strong><\/a> and modern realtime auction providers such TransFS<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0on credit card processing services too\u00a0limiting. Payments R Us<\/strong><\/a> is their Man Friday.<\/p>\n

Payments R Us bills itself as \u201cYour Gateway to Online Payment Solutions\u201d and offers guidance and advice on choosing merchant account providers. According to its website, \u201cWe allow you to compare vendors and pricing. Our service is free, confidential and objective.\u201d Payments R Us also provides a host of information on payment processing, merchant accounts and pricing plans.<\/p>\n

How does Payments R Us work?<\/p>\n

Merchants first submit a few details about their payments volume and type.<\/p>\n

\"Picture1_500w\"<\/p>\n

They then describe the nature items they sell, method of connectivity to their payment processor, need for fraud detection and prevention function, and a few other aspects of their business.<\/p>\n

\"Picture2\"<\/p>\n

Then the Payments R Us Suggester<\/strong> presents a list of payments processors that it has determined to demonstrate the closest match for the merchant\u2019s requirements.<\/p>\n

\"Picture3\"<\/p>\n

Unlike MoneyAisle or TransFS, Payments R Us doesn\u2019t seem to be executing a live auction to get the best rates from the participating vendors. In fact, contrary to its claims that it allows merchants to compare pricing, I couldn’t find any pricing information in its final report. Of course, pricing is not everything in a fairly mission critical function like payments processing. Since most merchants would want to evaluate quality, service and other critical attributes of a payments processor rather than immediately sign up with the cheapest one, the absence of pricing information at the initial stage is hardly a serious shortcoming. To evaluate various alternatives and engage in negotiations before selecting the best APM,\u00a0merchants can use Payments R Us\u2019 offer to establish a direct connection with the shortlisted vendors.<\/p>\n

Payments R Us is the first comparison engine I’ve come across for alternative payment methods.\u00a0In case readers know of any others, I request them to provide more details by posting comments below this post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many Americans might find it increasingly difficult to get, and hold on to, credit cards in the wake of the recently passed The Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure (CARD)…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sketharaman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sketharaman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sketharaman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sketharaman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sketharaman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sketharaman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sketharaman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sketharaman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sketharaman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}