CULVER CITY, Calif. - Adult industry transaction processor DHD Media announced on Monday that it will expand its billing services with third-party processing.
"We're excited about entering the third-party billing market because it gives us a platform to provide services to more of the companies in the industry and offer them the services we've been providing to many of the leaders for years," CEO Ron Jenkins DHD told AVN Online. "Additionally, we know that this will lead to even higher levels of features and results for our existing merchant processing services."
Visa and MasterCard generally place tight restrictions on processors via PCI certification, Jenkins said, and for third-party billers (HR-IPSPs), there are additional significant requirements that revolve around their confidence in a company's ability to perform credibly and reliably. Then a bank has to be willing to offer these third-party billers a merchant account, which entails significant risk to the bank, he added.
"The bank's level of confidence has to be extremely high," he said. "It's this combination of requirements that have kept the number of U.S. third-party billers so low. Fortunately, having worked for about a decade in this service from the merchant processing side, both Visa and our bank had a great deal of time to form an opinion of confidence in us and our ability to deliver for our clients."
CCBill and Epoch previously were the only third-party billers in the United States.
"There had long since been three third-party billers in the space" Jenkins said. "Then that number dropped to only two for quite some time. We are confident that the industry will embrace more freedom of choice in this important aspect of their business services."
Jenkins said DHD's new partnership with I-Bridge International establishes an alliance that offers clients decades of combined experience.
"In this new relationship, Johnny V., president of I-Bridge, will be taking the lead in business development for DHD's IPSP service," he said. "Johnny V. has a wide reach in the industry and a reputation for integrity that makes us very comfortable to have him talking to people about us.
"We're already seeing a very positive responsive from the very few major players that use third-party processing to whom we've already spoken. Knowing that he has the respect of serious industry leaders of that kind is something we think is a great addition to our team."
"People in this business know that at the end of the day, if your biller isn't working for you as hard as you are, then a lot of money is being left on the table," Johnny V. added. "For the first time, a very well-known and respected billing company that already has spent a decade building its reputation is able to evolve into a fully accredited third-party processor offering a wide range of services to clients."
According to Jenkins, banks and card associations have always liked DHD's ability to process high-risk transactions from a technical standpoint.
"Our clients have been very pleased with the results," he said. "In that role, there was only so much we could do to assist our customers, so evolving DHD Media into a full-service third-party processor was always our intention. The combination of higher revenues for our clients and lower charge-backs is a winning formula for their success and our own. We see this as an important moment where the industry is hungry for more freedom of choice from an experienced and trusted billing services provider."
