Cashflow Blog

My propeller head suggested that he set up a merchant account for my site using PayPal as the credit card processor. He told me it was no monthly fee, not set up and their fees were reasonable-so, I said go ahead! Today, a client called and wanted some search engine optimization work done for her website. The total came to $2760.00 and I told her we would need 50% to get started. I went to my new PayPal merchant account and put in the amount of $1380. A message came back that her Visa card could not be used??? She was on the line so she put me on hold and called Visa. They said we saw you made a payment of $1380 a few minutes ago using PayPal and gave her the authorization number.

I called PayPal and they told me something that was news to me-Even though her card had been authorized they had the right to refuse it because this transaction had raised a red flag. The red flag was the amount of the transaction and the fact that the card had not been used that much. My client called PayPal and confirmed that she wanted this transaction to go through but PayPal insisted on this long drawn out process to satisfy their system. Fortunately, this client is very kind and did not walk away from this $2700 dollar transaction. I called my old merchant service provider and got this taken care of-Good bye PayPal!!

Just a heads up for all of you considering using their merchant account service. Good luck and make lots of cash flow!

Steve Mertz
All Merchant Accounts are Not Created Equal!