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Reseller Newsletter - February 2009

Welcome to the first Reseller newsletter of 2009! Last year certainly was an interesting one—we know we don't have to tell you about the challenges facing our economy. But thanks to resellers like you, Authorize.Net was able to successfully weather the storm. In 2008, we saw more merchant setups than ever before, and more consumer migration to e-commerce, so there's no better time to understand what Authorize.Net has to offer your merchants. No one knows what 2009 will hold for all of us, but we at Authorize.Net are as excited as ever!

ACE Award for Customer Support

We are pleased to announce that Authorize.Net is a recipient of the 2008 Achievement in Customer Excellence (ACE) Award. Administered by a third-party vendor, CustomerSat, the ACE Award is based entirely on customer feedback and celebrates companies who demonstrate outstanding customer satisfaction. Authorize.Net was recognized in the categories of small business customer support and small business product and service satisfaction.

eCheck.Net Pre-Approval Program

The Authorize.Net eCheck.Net® Pre-Approval Program virtually eliminates the eCheck.Net application and underwriting process, enabling your pre-approved merchants to accept eCheck.Net transactions immediately, and providing you with an additional revenue stream for each merchant who signs up.

Our goal this year is to extend this extremely valuable, additional payment method to as many existing Authorize.Net merchants as possible. If any of your merchants qualify for the pre-approval program, we will notify them via e-mail of their pre-approval status. All they will need to do is log into the Merchant Interface, review their service pricing and processing limits, and accept the eCheck.Net Service Agreement. Nothing is required of you to get your merchants set up!

Benefits of eCheck.Net for your merchants include:

  • Fully integrated with their payment gateway accounts, including billing and reporting
  • The ability to accept payments from customers who don't have credit cards or prefer to pay from their bank accounts—no more inconvenient paper checks
  • Lower processing fees than credit cards and PayPal®
  • The ability to accept business-to-business payments
  • Combines with our Automated Recurring Billing™ (ARB) solution to create a convenient enhancement for subscription- or installment-based payments

For more information about eCheck.Net, please visit http://www.authorize.net/echeck.

We hope that you will encourage your eligible merchants to take advantage of the work we have done for them, so they can expand the online payment options they offer to their customers, and you can receive an additional residual each month.

New Merchant Support Tools

We understand that quality merchant support is key to re-selling Authorize.Net's services. In addition to our award-winning Customer Support department, we have recently launched two initiatives that we hope will assist your new and existing merchants in creating and maintaining their payment gateway accounts.

  • The Authorize.Net New Merchant Tour, located at http://welcome.authorize.net/, was designed to provide merchants with valuable information to get them started and to assist them with growing and protecting their business. The New Merchant Tour includes information on standard payment gateway features as well as our value-adding services.
  • We have also created a series of video tutorials to help merchants set up and manage their payment gateway accounts. Visit http://www.authorize.net/videos/ to review the videos we currently have up, and check back often for new additions.

CyberSource Fraud Report

Each year Authorize.Net's parent company, CyberSource, releases its Annual Fraud Report, which has become the definitive source of information throughout the industry regarding e-commerce fraud and fraud statistics. We strongly recommend you take a moment to download and review the report so as to be better prepared to assist your merchants in defending themselves against fraud. In the report you will find:

  • Detailed fraud metrics (fraud, chargebacks, credit issues)
  • Management practices and tools used/planned
  • Process mapping and risk management pipelines
  • Budgets (overall and how allocated)

Download the 2009 Fraud Report today at http://forms.cybersource.com/forms/FraudReport2009NAANETnewsletterFeb09.

Setup Fee Reporting Change

Currently, each time you add a new merchant to the Authorize.Net platform, we charge you a setup fee based on your buy rate program, and bill you that setup fee on the first day of the next month. The setup fee is listed on your billing statement.

As of March 1, 2009, we will be making two changes to this process. First, to align all our fees with how we currently pay residuals, there will now be a 30-day delay before we bill you for any new setup fees. For example, any account created during February will now be billed the setup fee on April 1st rather than March 1st.

The second change is related to how we report the setup fee. With this change, setup fees will move from your billing statement to your residual statement, and be displayed as a negative residual. You will now be able to view all of your merchants' activity for a given month on the Residual Detail Report in the Reseller Interface.

So what does this mean for your upcoming statements? Because of the 30-day delay, your March 1st statements will not include any charges for your merchants' setup fees. However, any applicable setup fees from February will be included on your April 1st residual statement. This billing change will not impact how we pay your residuals.

Setup Fee Reporting Change

In 2008 we reduced the rates for our Fraud Detection Suite (FDS) and eliminated the setup fee. However, the ability to set a sell rate for the FDS setup fee remained in the Reseller Interface. Since this field is no longer applicable, we have removed it as an editable field.

As a reminder, merchants pay only $5.00 a month for FDS. This is a tremendous value and we hope you'll continue to encourage your merchants to use FDS to help protect their business.

Advanced FDS Coming Soon!

We are excited to pre-announce the upcoming release of our new, Advanced Fraud Detection Suite™ (FDS). A new, value-adding service for you to resell, Advanced FDS is an enhanced and stronger version of our already effective FDS service. The new service will include additional filters, including a regional IP Address filter which will allow your merchants to flag transactions from specific regional areas. Stay tuned for more information!

ETA Reminder

The 2009 ETA Annual Meeting and Expo is right around the corner. As always, the conference will be held at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, NV, April 21-23. Look for Authorize.Net in booth 627. Each year we look forward to meeting with resellers like you, so be sure to register to attend at http://www.electran.org/content/view/230/270.

Thank You!

We began this newsletter by thanking you for a tremendous 2008 and we'd like to end it exactly the same way. The fact that you choose to resell the Authorize.Net Payment Gateway means a lot to us. We will continue to earn your trust and business and exceed your expectations in every way possible.

 
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