Amazon launch 3 payment services
July 29, 2008
Amazon have today launched Amazon Payments to enable sellers to accept payments from buyers using their Amazon log on credentials.
Amazon Flexible Payments actually launched in limited beta back in August 2007 and Amazon have rolled this in with their new product offerings which are Amazon Simple Pay and Checkout by Amazon.
Checkout by Amazon allows buyers to pay with their Amazon log on, but the seller has to check their Seller Central account to verify payment has been completed. It enables buyer to use Amazon’s patented one click checkout to complete their purchase and provides sellers with tools such as shipping calculators, tax rates and custom promotions for customers.
Amazon Simple Pay is a cut down payments system which redirects buyers to the Amazon Payments website to complete the transaction. There are simply cut and paste HTML code to enable sellers to get up and running quickly and easily but without the additional features of Checkout by Amazon.
Fees for both Simple pay and Checkout vary between 2.5% - 1.9% plus $0.30 per transaction, but payments under $10.00 incur a rate of 5% plus $0.05.
Flexible Payment Services which is now out of beta is designed for web developers for full integration using Amazon API calls.
It will be interesting to see how many merchants start offering Amazon Payments, there’s still time to add it to ecommerce sites before the Christmas selling season begins. At this point Amazon payments appears to be limited to the US. Although Amazon have been unable to comment at the time of writing, I’d expect it to roll out for the UK at some point in the future.
So will you be adding Amazon payments to your own website? Do you mind Amazon gaining access to your sales data which they undoubtedly would? One thing is certain - the more payment options that you can offer a buyer the less likely they are to abandon a shopping cart at checkout and more than 80 million potential customers already have Amazon account.
Google & PayPal: Skipping competitors
May 30, 2008
There’s this company which I adore because they’re one of the most unlikely companies you’d expect to embrace the Internet.
Topskips (yes a skip hire company) have a website, they have a blog, they even have their own online company TV channel, and back in July 2007 Topskips started to accept PayPal. The reason I like them so much is they pretty much do everything an eBay seller should be doing - website, blog, video (waves to the guys at vzaar) and online payments.
Now however the competition is hotting up in the skip payments industry - Topskips have just announced they’ll be accepting Google Checkout in addition to PayPal. That’s not something that’ll happen any time soon on eBay, but for your own website offering a choice of payment methods is one of the top ways to ensure customers don’t abandon shopping carts.
If you’ve never visited the Topskips website it’s well worth a browse. You might not be in the market for skip hire, but they could teach an awful lot of businesses just how to fully embrace the web.
Funds from UK cheques guaranteed
November 30, 2007
Sellers today can breathe a collective sigh of relief when receiving payment by cheque. From today any cheque will clear six days after it’s paid into a bank account and on the seventh day it can no longer bounce.
Previously cheques never really cleared and banks could reclaim funds from their customer bank accounts weeks or even months later. A cheque could never be considered “cleared” and there was no certainty of the recipient keeping the funds.
As well as the certainty that the funds are yours on the seventh day, banks will also credit interest no more than two days after the cheque is paid in, and funds will be available to withdraw from your account after no more than four days (although some banks have already implemented terms more favourable than this).
It’s great news for eBay sellers, if a buyer pays you by cheque you can ship a week later in the absolute certainty that the funds can never be reclaimed at some point in the future.
PayPal giveth and PayPal taketh away
November 28, 2007
You wouldn’t think it possible, but PayPal almost got me excited! Yes I know payment services are a little dull, but they’ve introduced a fantastic feature in the US and it appeared in my PayPal account so of course I subscribed immediately. Sadly it’s a mistake and PayPal are in the process of removing it from UK users accounts.
The feature is a downloaded PayPal plug-in for Internet Explorer and add-on for Firefox. Once installed it allows you to make payments to any website that accepts MasterCard even if they don’t accept PayPal.
To make the payment the plug-in creates a pseudo one time MasterCard debit card number. Once the card is used it can’t be used again so you never have to worry about online fraud. You can generate a unique Secure Card number on the spot for a particular purchase and you’re 100% protected from subsequent unauthorised purchases using that card.
Making the service even easier to use is the autofill which can populate checkout forms with contact information and addresses at the click of a button. No more manually typing your address each time you purchase from a new website. At the same time the plug-in will warn you if you’re visiting a suspicious website.
So all in all it’s a great feature, one time secure debit cards, the ability to use PayPal on sites that don’t accept PayPal, autofill of checkout information and fraud alerts for dodgy websites. Even better is that it puts PayPal directly on your browser, you can pay without visiting the PayPal website. What a shame it’s not available in the UK!
Disposable credit cards for ebay & PayPal
November 22, 2007
The Irish are making it easier to open eBay and PayPal accounts by accepting prepaid credit card style vouchers. 3V, the voucher issuer, say they will enable users to open PayPal accounts and buy and sell on eBay or indeed anywhere that accepts Visa payments. Vouchers can be purchased in local shops around Ireland, so they’re accessible to anyone over the age of 16.
I’m in two minds about this, firstly it’s good that eBay is open to users who don’t possess a credit card. The more people that can buy and sell on the site the better for everyone. However I don’t see a credit card styled voucher as giving the same verification as a proper credit card.
The 3V vouchers do offer a measure of protection to those wary of entering their credit card details online. Users are issued with a randomly generated Visa number and the CVV number is sent by text message to the users mobile. Even if the voucher is lost it can’t be used without the CVV number and essentially it’s a throwaway account once it’s used. The downside is the cost of purchasing the vouchers which in Ireland is a €5 surcharge.
3V have operated in the UK since November 2006 and on their UK site advertise their vouchers can be used on eBay.co.uk.
Misleading and Discouraging Payments Policy
September 28, 2007
eBay are introducing a Misleading and Discouraging Payments Policy which they’ll begin enforcing from mid October in Australia. This is an update of the PayPal Payments Policy which is effective on eBay.com, but which currently doesn’t exist on eBay.co.uk.
The new policy insists that you must accept all payment methods offered from all buyers with no restrictions. For instance you can no longer say you’ll only accept PayPal for purchases over £10.00, or that you’ll accept cheques but not from overseas customers. If you offer a payment method in your listing you have to accept it regardless of the location of the buyer.
This policy is not limited to details within the eBay listing, but includes communications between buyers and sellers.
Most of the examples (and the fact it’s an update of the PayPal Payments Policy) lead me to think this is simply aimed at sellers rejecting PayPal payments from certain buyers. However the implications are more serious. For International sellers you may be perfectly willing to accept cheques from UK buyers drawn on a UK bank account, but accepting cheques in US Dollars, Japanese Yen, Lebanese pounds or any other obscure currency from around the world is not only unrealistic, it’s also nigh on impossible to cash them!
If eBay are to introduce policies such as this in the UK they might as well go the whole way and insist on PayPal as the only acceptable form of payment. Accepting cheques as payment from various countries around the world is just not possible, but to comply with the new policy if you accept them for domestic transactions you have to accept them for International transactions.
Whilst the policy is only currently being introduced in Australia it’s likely to migrate to other eBay sites in the near future. To avoid upheaval when it happens it’s probably worth considering updating your listings to comply sooner rather than later as when it comes to the UK it’ll never be at a convenient time to edit all your listing templates.
I’d predict that it won’t be too far in the distant future that only PayPal is used on eBay. If it’s not because eBay insist upon it, it’ll be because any other form of payment has been made too awkward to accept.
Time for PayPal to be charitable
September 27, 2007
Google Checkout have eased ahead of PayPal in the race to attract business. They’ve offered to waive all fees for US charities, at least until 31st December 2008.
eBay have always donated fees to charities where products are sold on the site through eBay for Charity. They match the percentage the seller donates by donating the same percentage of fees. For direct charity sellers this is 100% of fees due going to the benefitting charity. PayPal however don’t donate fees, or even waive fees for processing for charities.
Google have suddenly made their service attractive to well over one million US non-profit organisations. It’s yet to be seen if they’ll introduce a similar measure for registered charities in the UK. It’s time for PayPal to play catch up!
Amazon launch Flexible Payments Service
August 3, 2007
It’s been rumoured all week, and now it’s official: Amazon have announced the launch of their new Flexible Payments Service. FPS is now in “limited beta”: I’d better say up front that possibilities for those outside the US are currently pretty limited, but nonetheless, this looks like a very interesting product.
“Designed from the ground up specifically for developers”, Amazon Flexible Payments is designed to be a platform upon which individual payment solutions can be built. Buyers use the same login and payment information which they would use on the Amazon site, which should allow the convenience of stored payment information at the same time as offering the security of the Amazon brand. FPS accepts payments through balance transfers within its own system, transfers from bank accounts, and credit cards. Reflecting the different fees charged to Amazon, merchants’ fee structure for each payment type is different: bank transfers are cheaper than credit cards, and balance transfers are cheaper still. Transactions under US$10 have their own fee structure, and a low fixed cost of $0.05 even makes micropayments look like a sensible possibility. For those who want to accept lots of very small payments, these can be aggregated over time to reduce processing fees. There is no set-up or monthly charge for using FPS.
One interesting aspect of FPS is that developers can specify that they take a cut of each transaction: I can imagine a time when ecommerce developers are paid not with an up-front fixed fee, but with a cut of every transaction that goes through a website that they’ve made.
So what does all this mean for eBay sellers? Well… nothing yet. Amazon FPS isn’t a payment method in itself: unlike Paypal, Nochex or even Google Checkout, you can’t just sign up and start taking payments. Nevertheless, it seems inevitable that a payment solution for eBay would be one of the first applications someone would develop. As eBay are still refusing to allow Google Checkout on the site, it seems likely we’ll see a ban on FPS-based applications fairly shortly - and equally likely that, with rates in many cases much lower than Paypal’s - sellers will fight to be allowed to use those applications. Watch this space: we live in interesting times.
Many thanks to Ina Steiner for the heads-up.
PayPal junk
July 8, 2007
PayPal can now be used for skip hire with 100% satisfaction money back guarantee! Topskips say they’ve listened to their customers and given more payment options including PayPal. They’re also the first to offer a 100% satisfaction promise that if your skip arrives more then 24 hours late or causes damage when delivered you’ll get your money back.
Topskips cater for the online buyer in just about every way possible, from booking a skip to skip news, a skip blog and even video information with Topskips TV. It’s no surprise that such a net savvy customer is expanding payment options to accept PayPay. It’s good to see businesses that aren’t traditionally online embracing the web so widely to appeal to customers.
Meg says eBay may eventually use Google Checkout
July 6, 2007
In a Bloomberg TV interview aired on Independence day (Sounds a bit like Freedom!) Meg Whitman revealed that eBay may eventually use Google Checkout if more people are satisfied with the service!
Checkout aficionados shouldn’t take too much hope of that being any time soon however. The comment was made while discussing a recent survey which found only 14 percent of Google Checkout users happy with it. Saying it may be allowed on eBay if user satisfaction increases sounds more like a dig at Checkout than a forward looking statement.
Meg points out the figure for PayPal users happy with the service was over double that of Checkout. PayPal has also increased it’s lead over Checkout since Christmas sales and Meg likened it to “a huge home run,” saying “It’s the most innovative Web payment product out there and has done really well, even in the face of a little bit of a challenge from Google.”
So what should we make of her comment that eBay may use Checkout? I think the operative word is *may*. I’m pretty sure eBay have no compelling reason to allow it, in fact it only benefits sellers and will certainly cost PayPal revenue. For buyers eBay and PayPal are synonymous and very few that open an eBay account don’t go on to open a PayPal account (at least in established territories). Don’t expect Checkout on eBay this year.
Google Checkout WAP enabled
June 4, 2007
Google Checkout has enabled mobile payments using WAP. Now any retailers in the UK or US that accept Checkout and have WAP enabed sites can accept payments from customers from mobile phones.
PayPal have supported payments via mobile phone (cell phone for those in the US ;-)) for some time. However their offering is more appealing for many applications as it works via SMS text messages. With PayPal you don’t need to be browsing a WAP enabled website to make a payment, you simply text the amount you wish to pay to the phone number of the recipient. PayPal already had a WAP interface when they introduced their text message payment service.
It’s good to see Checkout adding more sophisticated services, but they’re still very much playing a game of catchup.
PayPal becomes a Bank, no longer under FSA
May 15, 2007
PayPal announced this morning they are to become a bank headquartered in Luxembourg known as PayPal Europe SÃ rl & Cie, SCA (PayPal Luxembourg). All European PayPal accounts will be transferred to the new Bank on 2nd July.
The Bank of PayPal should gain a huge boost in momentum against their nearest competitors which in the UK are Nochex and more recently Google Checkout. Nochex has remained a smaller player, although popular - Checkout is merely a “Checkout flow for existing payment methods”. The irony is in the near future it could be possible to click through Google Checkout with your PayPal bank card - it’s already possible to use Google Checkout with your PayPal credit card (although it’s an affiliate card though GE Capital Bank Limited). Many larger retailers don’t accept PayPal services but the change from an electronic money issuer to a banking institution could make them a more attractive proposition.
The change also means that they’ll no longer be regulated by the FSA but will be regulated as a bank by the Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier (CSSF), the Luxembourg equivalent of the FSA.
It remains to be seen which services will be affected by the changes. The despised ten day clearing time for eCheques should clear more promptly. PayPal Website Payments Pro (very similar to a full merchant account) may become more attractive to large retailers. PayPal will also have more flexibility to introduce new features such as debit cards allowing you to spend funds held in your PayPal account.
You can find more information on the PayPal website.
Checkout Google Adwords
May 12, 2007
A question was asked in the TameBay forum “Are paypal afraid of google checkout?” This led me to thinking about Google’s business and just why Checkout is important to them. Many online retailers have welcomed them as an alternative to PayPal, but the truth is Google aren’t actually interested in competing.
Checkout was conceived for one reason alone - and that’s to build and protect 98% of Google’s revenue - Adwords!
Adwords allow retailers to purchase adverts triggered when a user searches Google. There are two sets of results, natural or organic results and paid for (Adwords) results. Google uses a number of algorithms to decide which retailers advert should appear at the top of the paid results, combining how much they’re paying with how many users click on and how relevant their advert is. The delightful part of adwords is that if no one clicks on your advert there is nothing to pay, you only pay when a prospective buyer is interested enough to click on your advert.
So how does that relate to Checkout? Read more
PayPal Expands to 190 Markets Worldwide
May 10, 2007
PayPal today announced that customers in 87 new markets can send money online with PayPal. In addition, customers using PayPal.com will now be able to view the site in Spanish, French and simplified Chinese.
Customers using PayPal.com can now also view the site in Spanish, French and simplified Chinese as well as US English. The addition of these new languages will enable Spanish, French and Chinese-speaking PayPal users to shop online securely and simply in the language they prefer. Customers using an Internet browser in any of these three languages will automatically be offered to view PayPal.com in one of these languages when they first visit the site.
With Google Checkout blowing millions on incentives to attract business there’s a lot of catching up to support retailers who want to appeal to a worldwide customer base. PayPal with Website Payments Pro now covers a vast geographic area and one Checkout will take years to compete with.
Read more
Nochex Merchant Account sale
May 1, 2007
Nochex are offering half price merchant account sign-ups during May. Normally priced at £50 as a one-off set up fee, you can save £25 if you sign up before 31st May.
I’ve had a merchant account with Nochex for over a year now, and can definitely recommend them to anyone who doesn’t have a fully-fledged merchant account with their bank. Even if the majority of your payments come via Paypal, you never know when an alternative might come in useful: when Paypal’s not working, or for a customer who can’t or won’t use Paypal. If you have a Nochex merchant account, you can accept credit and debit cards directly - there’s no customer sign-up necessary. Moreover, their support staff are incredibly helpful, and website integration is a piece of cake.
And no, they’re not paying me to write this (though they’re welcome to if they like
).
Google Checkout £10 for £30 not available to all
April 27, 2007
Google have made much of their Checkout promotions where they’re basically buying market share. Spend £30 and Google will bung you a tenner so you’ll only pay £20 - a great deal for buyers and retailers with the promotion in place have reported great results. Rather than place a large order buyers are making multiple purchases of just over the £30 limit. Google have no limit on the number of transactions you can make with a particular retailer, or the number of £10s you can receive back. The more you spend the more you get.
However it’s not all great for retailers struggling to attract custom and jump through the checkout hoops. On the Checkout website it states that “merchant sites are selected for inclusion in promotions based on Google Checkout sales and the overall Google Checkout experience they offer“. Signing up for a Checkout account isn’t the universal panacea for sales rolling through the door from delighted customers with an unlimited £10 discount card.
Unless you’re invited to participate (or my take is “Unless Google think you’re going to get them enough new signups to checkout”) you’ll be hard pressed to fulfil all the criteria, which are so nebulous there is no sure way to tell if you’ll qualify or not anyway. Below is a typical email being sent out to merchants requesting more information on how to promote checkout with their promotion:
Thank you for your email.
I understand that you would like to {participate in a Google Checkout promotion/list your website XXX in our store directory.} I forwarded your information to our marketing team, who will review your website and Google Checkout account to determine your eligibility. Among other criteria (which may vary from promotion to promotion), we select sites based on their Google Checkout sales and the overall user experience they offer. To improve your chances of being selected, you may wish to try the following:
1. Place a Google Checkout button immediately beside, above or below every existing checkout button or link on your website. (Learn more about button placement at http://checkout.google.com/seller/checkout_buttons.html.)
2. Display ‘or checkout with’ between the Google Checkout button and your existing checkout button.
3. Display a ‘What is Google Checkout?’ link below the Google Checkout button. Direct this link to a page where you can explain Google Checkout benefits to your buyers.
4. Use a Google Checkout button that is the same size as your existing checkout button. If possible, make sure that these buttons are side-by-side.
If you are selected to participate in a future Google Checkout promotion, we will contact you by email. Please do not market any Google Checkout promotions unless you have received an invitation from Google.
Thank you for your interest in Google Checkout.
Transparency and straight answers about the promotion are what retailers are calling for. If anyone has more information on how to ensure a retailer qualifies for the checkout promotions please add a comment below.
An Interview with Scot Wingo
April 23, 2007
Last week I attended the ChannelAdvisor Catalyst Conference and then eBay University on the Saturday. I’ll be posting my thoughts on both over the course of this week.
At Catalyst I had the opportunity to interview Scot Wingo, President and CEO of ChannelAdvisor and he shared his thoughts with me on many topics of interest to eBay traders and ecommerce in general. Timing for our interview couldn’t have been better - eBay released their Q1 results the night before. Scot’s take is that the results were better than expected across the board, with only the growth in active users and number of listings lagging. However if eBay can produce higher profits on fewer listings either selling prices are up or a higher percentage of listings are finding buyers - either (or both) should please sellers. With growth Internationally at 38% and within the US at 18% eBay.com continues to lag behind in it’s contribution to total revenues.
Read more
Paypal, Yahoo stand together against Checkout
April 19, 2007
Yahoo and Paypal are promoting merchants who advertise with Yahoo and offer Paypal’s Express Checkout with a special logo. The new Yahoo! Paypal Checkout service offers merchants free Express Checkout processing until the end of the year, and US$100 worth of advertising on Yahoo: it’s all very reminiscent of, and presumably designed to compete with, Google Checkout’s offers. The new service is part of an ongoing partnership between Paypal and Yahoo. Under an agreement struck last year, before Google had officially launched their Checkout service, Paypal provide Yahoo’s Wallet service, where users can store billing and shipping information.
Nochex cash advance fees: resolved?
April 18, 2007
I posted a while back about Nochex buyers being charged an extra fee by their credit card issuer for using the service. According to Nochex, this is now resolved:
Nochex believe that cash surcharges should not arise in the future with consumers using the Nochex service, However we would ask merchants, sellers and consumers to please let us know if the problem does recur.
I do hope this *is* resolved, because even though Google Checkout might be trying to break Paypal’s monopoly, a market totally dominated by two huge players can’t be good for sellers.
Google Checkout the UK
April 13, 2007
Google have launched their payments service Google Checkout in the UK. The credit card payments service has been available in the US since last year, but until now was not available to buyers and sellers in Europe. Currently only US and UK merchants may register, but buyers from a number of different countries can shop.
Dubbed a “Paypal killer”, Checkout’s launch wasn’t without its problems, but an agressive marketing strategy last Christmas, no seller fees throughout 2007 and giveaways to shoppers have seen its popularity increase. UK sellers will also benefit from a fee-free service this year, as well as the standard offer of £10 of orders processed free for every £1 spent on Google advertising. We predict that UK merchants will be flocking to sign up today!
With eBay having stated that it will not allow Checkout on site, that slice of Paypal’s market seems safe. Google’s target will be smaller website owners who don’t have their own merchant accounts. Until now, there has been little choice in this marketplace: stick with Paypal, or sign up with Nochex. However, problems with customers being charged extra bank fees for using Nochex have caused many Nochex merchants to think again about the service. As Google Checkout works slightly differently to both Nochex and Paypal, faciliatating ordinary card payments, it seems that they will be safe from this extra fee. So while Checkout may not be a Paypal-killer just yet, it surely marks the beginning of the end for Nochex.
Updated to add: Or perhaps not. It seems that Google will require UK merchants to have a VAT number to be permitted to register. This seems to knock out a huge proportion of Google’s potential market to me.
Updated AGAIN to add: No, apparently that’s been dropped. Non-VAT reg. is okay.
eBay sued over Paypal
April 6, 2007
An eBay seller is suing the company for violating antitrust laws. Texan Michael Malone claims that eBay engages in “illegal tie-in and steering practices” by pushing members to use Paypal payments. Malone sold a pair of speakers in 2005 for US$200, for which he was charged US$5 in Paypal fees. He believes this to be above the market rate.
I have no idea what credit card processing fees are like in the US, but if Mr Malone would care to have a look at the costs of merchant accounts in Europe, I think he’d suddenly find Paypal fees rather reasonable.
Many thanks to Aaryn for the link.
Free ecommerce site setup from Actinic and PayPal
April 2, 2007
Actinic has partnered with PayPal Website Payments Pro and are offering to waive setup costs (£49.99 +VAT) for their Actinic Express product. PayPal Website Payments Pro are already waiving monthly fees until July this year and Actinic’s offer runs alongside this. All you’ll pay until July is the £19.99 +VAT monthly Actinic charge along with PayPal processing fees.
This looks a really attractive offer for many eBayers as it’s an “out of the box” solution to set up your own ecommerce store to run in parallel with your eBay shop. Why carry on paying eBay fees when you can migrate buyers to your own website? We’d recommend shopping about though, and in fact there are many more cost effective solutions available than Actinic if you have a little HTML knowledge. osCommerce is a free to use open source solution, the advantage of Actinic is that you need very little prior knowledge and don’t even need your own web space to host your shop.
In the long term the £19.99 +VAT a month is a steep overhead compared to other solutions, with a years subscription costing £240 +VAT you could easily have a properly customised solution tailored to your exact requirements. We’d recommend some research of different solutions before signing up simply to save the setup cost. If you don’t have your own ecommerce site though, it’s a great incentive prompting you to consider your options.
PayPal launch Website Payments Pro
March 30, 2007
PayPal have launched new facilities for merchants use on their own websites - Website Payments Pro. It gives greater flexibilty with more choice for buyers on how to pay even if they don’t have a PayPal account. Although the cost will be £20 per month PayPal are waiving monthly fees until 1st July 2007.
* Get features of merchant accounts and gateways at a low cost
* Customers shop and pay with credit cards directly on your website
* Customers can also pay you with credit cards via phone, fax, mail, or in person
* Use PayPal Manager as a central place to manage your transactions
Full details of Website Payments and Website Payments Pro are available on the PayPal comparison chart.
Skype me money via PayPal
March 28, 2007
I’ve just download Skype 3.2 beta and as promised it’s now PayPal enabled! I can now right click any contact and send them money via PayPal without even leaving Skype to do so. Of course before you start sending money you have to link your Skype account to your PayPal account. Even better then sending money, once you’ve linked your Skype account to your PayPal account people can send you money through Skype, and it’ll appear directly in your PayPal account.
If anyone would like to test send money in Skype feel free to send me some - my skype account is mountroadcomputers
Another cute innovation is Skype Find, it enables you to search a locality for a local business such as a restaurant, pub, hotel, garage etc. If you have a favourite you can add it to the directory so that others can find it!
Contact management is improved with the ability to search your address books from Outlook, Outlook Express, Hotmail, Yahoo! and Gmail. If your contacts already have a skype account they’ll be added, and if not Skype can automatically send them a note encouraging them to sign up.
There’s a lot to like in the new version of Skype, well worth waiting a few minutes for the download.
Surprise fees for Nochex buyers
March 28, 2007
The BBC’s Working Lunch programme yesterday had a feature about a viewer who was charged an extra fee by his credit card company for paying via Nochex. The £3 fee was for a “cash advance” on the card. A number of sellers on the Nochex forums have confirmed that they too are receiving complaints from customers who were not warned about this cash advance fee. Some of the affected cards may be Capital One, GM, MBNA, Mint, Sainsbury’s and Tesco.
There is some suggestion that the sudden rush of problems is due to the way that Nochex payments are coded by card issuers: Nochex themselves recommend that if you have been charged, you contact your card issuer and request the charge be cancelled, as the transaction was an “internet purchase”, not a “cash advance”. Nochex support said today:
It may be that this is being used by a handful of credit card issuers as a way of creating an additional income stream for the banks. It should be stressed that the vast majority of main stream card issuers do not charge such a fee and most customers should not by affected by these bank charges.
Nochex have now updated their payment pages to warn that “some” card issuers may charge a fee. Though this is better than nothing, it does not help the buyer who, in the middle of purchasing, has to decide whether to risk it or not. It certainly doesn’t reassure the seller who relies on Nochex to receive payments, and now has to choose between trying to push all buyers back to Paypal, or dealing with irate emails from those who have been charged by their banks. Many sellers will be thinking long and hard now about the viability of their Nochex accounts, and whether a move to a merchant banking account might be in their longer-term interests.
The closest thing that Paypal UK has to a competitor, Nochex process online payments via debit and credit card; they’re particularly popular with small website operators, as they have a low-cost merchant account which will process any debit or credit card, even from buyers who are not members of the service. Their survival, however, may rely on resolving this latest crisis.


