Industry standards are constantly changing. Often times as these changes occur they impact your ability to transact business and increase your bottom line. Webmasters understand the impact of these changes and therefore, know the importance of adding alternative billing methods in order to maximize their revenue stream.
Over the last few years, we have seen online checks becoming a smart alternative for billing in the adult industry. Online checks open the door for merchants to take advantage of the 30% of US consumers that do not have credit cards. The online check alternative can also be an option for your consumers who either prefer to pay out of their checking accounts, or perhaps they have reached their limit on their credit cards.
In my experience, although a majority of websites offer online check options to their customers, they do not seem to capitalize on this option. The reasons for not taking full advantage of this payment option perhaps are due in part (1) a failure of many companies to make the process user friendly, or just a lack of information informing the consumer of the processor and the ease of its use.
There has been plenty written on the credit card payment option and the security measures needed to meet the industry requirements. We have all had to become experts in understanding charge back rates, and refund policies and procedures. The 1% rule has further impacted the way you do business and a change had to be made in order to stay in business. But there has been very little written on the subject of security and processing of online checks. As a result, there are still some online merchants who have been hesitant to add online checks to their payment options. They are not sure how it fits into their bottom line or how they can benefit.
What is the process to accept online check?
It’s really rather simple. Consumers who wish to pay for a purchase with an electronic check simply select the electronic check option and enter the requested bank account information.
This data is then encrypted using SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) encryption technology and transmitted to a secure server for posting. Transactions are automatically settled each business day. The, consumers account is debited and the merchant’s account is credited. The timing of the debits and credits may vary from each bank and from each processor.
Why Now?
If you learn one thing from adult webmasters is that they are experts in maximizing every hit that comes through their websites. Each hit to their website is carefully monitored and each expired membership is re-marketed. It is safe to say that for the most part, webmasters have the monitoring of traffic coming to their websites down to a science.
Although, many webmasters have mastered the monitoring of their traffic, they have not maximized the full potential of available revenue streams because they have not added the online check payment solution to their join pages!
Ask most Webmasters what they do with their credit card transactions that have not resulted in a sale, and most of them will admit that they do nothing at all or at most, sell off the traffic. What if these webmasters added online checks as alternative payment method for those potentially lost sales on a credit card. Maybe that end user has reached their credit limit or aggressive parameters have been set causing a transaction to be declined on a good account? If the consumer is offered another payment method at that time, a sale could be saved thereby increasing revenue.
Holly Moss is the Sales & Marketing Director for Electracash,Inc. If you should have direct questions about adding online checks to your websites please feel free to contact holly@electracash.com. |
RSS Feeds | Submit A Listing | Link To Us | Advertising | Contact Us
