[Asterisk-Users] Re: merchant account

[trixter aka Bret McDanel]

On Thu, 2005-10-20 at 23:37 -0700, Justin Newman wrote:
> What about SMS or LEC billing? The second may be more difficult, but there
> are many solutions with SMS, even if it is just transferring contact
> information (instead of hiring operators to typing in data with the keypad).
> The first can be used alone or in conjunction with credit cards and direct
> widthdrawals.
> 

That puts a burden on the caller to have a mobile with sms capability.
While generally this isnt a problem, there are still issues with SMS in
america (I cant get my gmail invite with my provider for example).  For
those users there would still have to be an alternate.

LEC billing I dont think is as easy to accomplish without a premium
number.  And those have their own problems (see below).  

> 900 numbers work well, but they are expensive. Probably the 2nd easiest
> solution, aside from credit cards (if you can tackle the data collection
> piece).
> 
Well there is the problem that plagued premium numbers in america in the
90s.  People dispute the call saying it wasnt them or any authorized
user.  The LEC then refuses to collect and the 900 operator has to hire
an army of collection agents to get any money (at an additional cost of
course) or write off the total amount.  This is part of why 900 numbers
charge such high rates, the phone companies want a larger cut per minute
and most importantly they have to write off a certain number of calls as
uncollectable.

> Credit cards are difficult because of security problems, plus the market you
> are targeting may not have legal access to these cards. :) That means
> chargebacks.
> 
illegal access to the card is a crime under title 18 united states code
section 1029.  Lets say that a kid gets a card of his parents and uses
it, the parents then have a choice of disputing as fraud or possibly
their kid going to jail/probation (there is no 'minor' status when it
comes to federal crimes, infact on cybercrime.gov the feds have bragged
about convicting a 16 year old).  

We are working on ways to make users more tracable but as yet we havent
fully done that.  There are weaknesses we know about here someone could
use the service and there would be virtually no trace of that user.


> Direct withdrawal (ACH/EFT) can be even more problematic than credit cards,
> although it is inexpensive.
> 

Its roughly the same as credit cards although far easier to get the
information (everything needed is present on a check that was written to
someone else).  We do not plan on offering that service.

-- 
Trixter http://www.0xdecafbad.com     Bret McDanel
UK +44 870 340 4605   Germany +49 801 777 555 3402
US +1 360 207 0479 or +1 516 687 5200
FreeWorldDialup: 635378
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