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Reseller Newsletter - December 2009

Welcome to the final newsletter of 2009. We hope that as we hit the midpoint of the holiday shopping season that you'll have the opportunity to enjoy the rewards of a year's worth of hard work, while also finding time to spend with those who are dearest to you. As always, our goal for this newsletter is to provide you, our valued resellers, with information on new releases, enhancements and general tidbits that can help you run and grow your business more efficiently. Please read on and if you have any questions about anything you read here, or suggestions for our next newsletter, feel free to e-mail us at resellersupport@authorize.net.

Simple Checkout

Released in August 2008, Simple Checkout has become a favorite integration method for merchants and non-profits looking for a quick and secure method for accepting payments online. By creating Buy Now and Donate buttons from within the Merchant Interface, it's easy to accept payments without extensive programming knowledge. Simple Checkout is ideal for specialty merchants that typically sell one item (in any quantity) per order, and organizations that rely on donations.

A recent Simple Checkout update included the following enhancements:

  • Merchants now have the ability to customize the payment form's header and footer to more closely resemble the header and footer of their Web site.
  • Simple Checkout now supports multiple donations levels. Non-profits and merchants who depend upon donations can specify up to five donation amounts or allow their customers to specify their own donation amount.

For more information on Simple Checkout, please visit the Simple Checkout product page located at http://www.authorize.net/simplecheckout/.

Help Your Merchants Fight Fraud

At Authorize.Net, fraud prevention is of the utmost concern and we want to help your merchants protect their businesses, especially during the holiday season. So as we did last year, we are currently offering a promotion that allows your merchants to try the Advanced Fraud Detection Suite™ (AFDS) for free through January 2010. There are no commitments and no obligations. We simply want to help your merchants with this valuable service.

AFDS is a simple way for your merchants to help protect their businesses from potential losses. Benefits of AFDS include:

  • Easy to use and customizable
  • 12 different filters and tools
  • Intuitive wizard to help customize AFDS to meet business needs
  • Robust reporting

Any non-AFDS enabled merchant who signs up before January 31, 2010, will see a $9.95 fee on their monthly billing statement for the AFDS service. However, a corresponding credit in the full amount will also appear on each statement. To continue enjoying the benefits of AFDS after January 31, 2010, merchants simply do nothing. They will continue to see a $9.95 AFDS fee each month. To cancel AFDS, merchants will need to contact Customer Support prior to January 31, 2010 to avoid further charges.

To sign up for AFDS, merchants can log into the Merchant Interface and click Fraud Detection Suite in the main menu. After reading and accepting the Fraud Detection Suite Terms and Conditions, their account will be enabled for AFDS immediately.

Help in the fight against fraud and encourage your merchants to sign up for AFDS today!

eTicketing Support for Merchants and Resellers

We recently introduced the new eTicket service for contacting Authorize.Net Reseller and Merchant Customer Support. The new system allows you and your merchants to directly submit and manage customer support requests via an eTicket from within the Reseller or Merchant Interfaces, instead of relying solely on e-mail responses. The eTicket system provides a more secure and efficient way of handling support-related questions.

Additional benefits of using the eTicket service include:

  • The ability to review the status of all open and pending customer support requests
  • Automatic account authentication via your Reseller Interface or your merchants' Merchant Interface login credentials
  • The ability to review your entire history of eTickets

To access the eTicket service, log into the Reseller Interface at https://account.authorize.net/interfaces/reseller/frontend/login.aspx and click Support at the top of the page. From there you can click Create a New eTicket or Manage Existing eTickets. Your merchants can do the same by logging into the Merchant Interface at https://account.authorize.net and clicking Contact at the top of the home page.

Gift Card Reminder

With the holiday season upon us, many online shoppers will be buying gift credit cards (stored-value Visa, MasterCard, Discover or American Express cards) for their holiday presents, and in the coming weeks many of your merchants' customers may be using these cards to pay for their purchases.

As a reminder, your merchants may need to update their Address Verification Service (AVS) filter settings in order to successfully process gift credit card transactions. AVS allows merchants to validate a customer's billing address before accepting the transaction. However, for gift credit cards, the actual customer's billing address will most likely not be associated with the gift card, or will not exist on file at the card issuing bank. With the default payment gateway AVS settings in place, this may result in a rejected transaction.

To allow for smooth processing of gift credit cards during the increased holiday and post-holiday shopping season, please have your merchants take the following steps in the Merchant Interface to turn off the appropriate default setting:

  1. Click Settings in the Account section of the main menu
  2. Click Address Verification Service in the Security section
  3. Click to deselect the checkbox labeled Address information for cardholder is unavailable (U)
  4. Click Submit

Your merchants' AVS settings will then be updated to allow the processing of gift credit card purchases with unavailable address information.

Fraudulent Sites and Phishing Scams Reminder

Authorize.Net occasionally identifies fraudulent Web sites which mimic the official Authorize.Net Web site. While we work to have these sites shut down in a timely manner, there is no guarantee that such sites will be shut down, nor a way for Authorize.Net to identify all fraudulent sites.

If you or your merchants receive an e-mail requesting sensitive or updated Authorize.Net account information, do not respond to the e-mail and do not click on any links that may be included. Instead, please contact Authorize.Net Reseller Support toll-free at (888) 437-0481, from 6 AM to 5 PM Pacific, to verify that the message is genuine. (Merchants should contact Merchant Support.) If the message is not from Authorize.Net, you may be asked to provide details about the message to assist in responding to the potential fraud attempt.

Authorize.Net will never request that you send sensitive information to us via e-mail. Please do not send sensitive data to us via e-mail because there is no sure way of preventing inadvertent or unauthorized access to e-mails both sent and received. You should also avoid opening e-mail from any unknown persons or clicking links in e-mails from unknown persons, as it may lead to malicious software, virus infections or unintentional disclosure of sensitive data.

Examples of information that are considered sensitive include, but are not limited to:

  • Bank account numbers
  • Credit card numbers
  • CVV data (3- or 4-digit card code & magnetic track data)
  • Passwords (Authorize.Net or otherwise)
  • PIN numbers
  • Secret question & answer
  • Social Security Numbers
  • Tax ID numbers
  • Bank routing numbers
  • Driver's License numbers
  • Merchant processing ID numbers

If you believe you may have inadvertently responded to, or clicked a link in a fraudulent e-mail, please contact Authorize.Net for assistance in securing your account. Also, if ever there is a business need for you to disclose sensitive information to Authorize.Net you think your password may have been compromised or you believe that a malicious person is posing as Authorize.Net, please contact Authorize.Net Reseller Support for guidance.

To learn more about fraud and phishing schemes please visit http://www.us-cert.gov/cas/tips/ST04-014.html.

Finding Answers Reminder

While we're excited about adding the new eTicketing system to our other existing avenues of support, (phone, e-mail and chat), self-help is often the most efficient and effective means for you and merchants to find the answers to your questions. When talking to your merchants about Authorize.Net support, we hope you encourage them to review the following:

Reseller Training

As you may know, we provide monthly reseller training sessions on everything from our value-adding services, to using the Reseller Interface. The topic of the sessions changes each month and we provide two different dates and times for you to attend. The reseller trainings are presented every 2nd and 4th Thursday of each month. However, due to the holiday schedule, there will be no further training sessions in 2009. To view upcoming 2010 sessions, please visit the Reseller Toolkit at http://reseller.authorize.net/.

Conclusion

As another year winds down, we'd like to thank you all for everything that you do to make Authorize.Net the premier payment gateway. We are looking forward to the successful completion of yet another busy holiday season. And though we may say it a lot, it's only because it's true: we owe our success to our valued resellers. Thank you and Happy Holidays!

Sincerely,
Authorize.Net

 
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