"For me, the best thing I ever did in the adult Internet is use Netbilling," insists Steve Blaier, President of CSB Entertainment (www.csbentertainment.com), a $1.5 million a year business which runs adult Internet websites. Blaier has used Netbilling for over a year, after hearing about it from a friend in the adult industry. "There are a lot of options out there to use your own merchant account, and everybody calls to offer this and that, but I stick with Netbilling. I wouldn't even try anybody else at this point. I'm a very satisfied customer," Blaier stresses.
Netbilling Inc. helps online companies to facilitate and simplify the selling of products and services via the Internet; they also ensure that e-merchants receive payment from customers buying over the Web, and help to avoid chargebacks. "Netbilling does real time transactions via the Internet, instantaneously authorizing or declining credit cards for adult and mainstream e-commerce sites," says Karen Campbell, Sales Manager for Netbilling (www.netbilling.com). "Our customer service center provides a 24/7 live staff to answer phone calls and e-mails for e-merchants who don't want to deal with the customer on a day-to-day basis. It's basically for membership websites; people who want to cancel their site; or have questions regarding their bills. Our customer service staff is trained in answering these calls, which can vary greatly. Especially with adult memberships, people call and have all kinds of scenarios as to why they didn't successfully complete the transaction. We qualify the transaction and cancel the account, and try to prevent those customers from calling their credit card companies. This keeps chargebacks down for Netbilling clients by having our staff do customer service for them."
As part of its service package, Netbilling assists clients with online store building, including a shopping cart feature for consumers. "It's available to our customers at no additional cost to them," Campbell says. "If somebody doesn't have a lot of experience programming or doing scripting on their website, it's very simple to have a shopping cart. You don't have to be a technical genius in order to use our shopping cart."
Netbilling also offers an address verification system, which verifies the address of the card holder. The system, through a series of modems, IP certifications and other devices, dials up the issuing bank to check that the correct information is entered on the sign-up form at the merchant's website.
The system also assists in preventing chargebacks, easily one of e-porn's biggest headaches. "The whole scenario of chargebacks on the adult Internet is rather unfair to the adult merchant," Campbell contends. "I think there's more consumer fraud, which results in chargebacks to the merchants. We try to provide the tools for webmasters to prevent the chargebacks from occurring in the first place. We have what we call a ?contaminated database' which includes lots of credit card numbers that have previously charged back on the sites we process for."
For consumers or merchants who don't wish to conduct transactions via credit card, Netbilling offers check processing via the Net. Campbell explains, "It works much like a credit card, except the customer enters his or her banking information, the routing and accounts numbers. It's like writing a check on the Internet.
"We also have lots of fraud scrubbing, which means the system goes through certain levels of verifying information. With our fraud shield, you can actually block out certain countries, e-mail addresses, domain names, IP and street addresses. Usually, the transaction processes in three to six seconds. This provides clients with more tools - the thing is, it prevents the chargeback from occurring. Because once the chargeback occurs, there's really nothing the e-merchant can do about it," she states.
"Netbilling advises us on things we shouldn't do, such as certain foreign transactions," says CSB's Blaier. "Certain countries, everything is returned as a chargeback. Turkey, Russia, Greece, Israel � there's actually a list of 40, 50 countries on it they e-mailed me. Mostly Third-World nations, and all the former Soviet republics. I absolutely do not accept business from these countries," Blaier says.
In addition to these services, Netbilling has a referring entity agreement, which gives its customers a percentage of the contract for any new client they refer. "There are lots of companies constantly asking about e-commerce solutions - Web design, hosting companies - this would be profitable for. We're always looking to establish relationships with people who can send us more business."
Launched in 1998, Netbilling today has about 30 employees. The sales, marketing, and customer service office is located in Santa Clarita, Calif., just north of LA. Its accounting office is in Scottsdale, Ariz., and transaction servers and programmers are in Chicago. Netbilling derives about 70 percent of its customers from e-porn, and has a varied portfolio of mainstream clients selling rural utilities, camera equipment and supplies, horse breeding and stables, and other products and services. It also has non-adult, as well as adult, video sale, content provider, ISP, and hosting company clients. Cybersex clients include webmaster programs, and general, fetish, and age verification sites.
The majority of Netbilling customers are US-based, but the company also has clients in Britain, Australia, Italy, and Japan. "The trend nowadays, especially in the adult industry, is for merchants to go offshore with their merchant account," Campbell says. "Offshore accounts are more liberal when it comes to chargebacks allowed. Visa Latin America, Visa Europe, they have different rules regarding chargeback ratios. Overseas accounts are located in Panama, the Netherlands, and they're working on Germany, Japan, and Mexico. They can be pretty much everywhere. We are certified with processors attached to the international merchant accounts."
"Our growth has been amazing," says Campbell. "We are a profitable company, and our rates are very affordable. We've got some new products and services planned that I can't wait to tell people about. Give us a call and we'll be happy to talk about what we can do for you."
"Overall, they're a really good billing company," says Blaier. "Down time is minimal. Their system is very quick and customizable, and they handle the membership recurring. They're real nice people; if you have a problem, just get them on the phone. They answer e-mails promptly."
Netbilling Inc. can be reached by phone at 888.347.8166; or e-mail [email protected]
