Reseller Newsletter - September 2008

• Gearing Up For the Holidays
• Transaction ID Expansion Reminder
• Best Customer Support In The Industry
• Help Your Merchants Fight Fraud This Holiday Season
• eCheck.Net® Holiday Promotion
• Merchant Interface Training For Resellers
• Merchant Billing Emails
• Simple Checkout
• We Want To Hear From You!
• Conclusion

Labor Day has come and gone, and though it's hard to believe, 2008 is already more than halfway over! So far, this year has proven to be another successful one, thanks largely to you and your efforts. We appreciate all the work that you do to recommend and sell Authorize.Net products and services. Now as we look to the remaining months of '08, the holiday shopping season is right around the corner—and it's shaping up to be bigger than ever!

Gearing Up For The Holidays

Traditionally, as consumers gear up for the approaching holidays, the e-commerce industry sees a significant rise in new merchants, online traffic and purchases. This year, consumer concerns ranging from the cost of gas to a desire to "go green," could actually work in our favor, causing an even bigger rise in online sales as many customers turn to the Internet to fulfill their shopping lists in an effort to drive less and conserve more.

This year's potential for increased online sales translates into a tremendous revenue opportunity for resellers like you. Now is an excellent time to work with Authorize.Net to sign up new merchants with a payment gateway account. Let us know how we can help you increase your holiday business. By signing up merchants sooner rather than later, you ensure that their businesses are up and running, and ready for holiday traffic. It's simple really: the more merchants you sign up in time for the holiday shopping season, the more your residual checks will be.

We hope you'll take advantage of all that Authorize.Net has to offer your merchants, and leverage our reputation for security and reliability to encourage your new merchants to sign up now.

Transaction ID Expansion Reminder

In early October, Authorize.Net will be expanding the range of Transaction IDs issued by the payment gateway. The Transaction ID field was originally developed with a maximum numeric value of 2,147,483,647. As the number of merchants using the Authorize.Net Payment Gateway has grown, we have identified a time in which the Transaction ID count will surpass 2,147,483,647. For this reason, we are in the process of expanding the range of Transaction IDs that the payment gateway can issue. Accordingly, we are communicating to all Authorize.Net merchants to verify that their systems can accommodate a 10-digit Transaction ID greater than 2,147,483,647.

In most cases your merchants' transaction processing will not be affected. However, if they have an internal business application or solution that relies upon the Transaction ID field, their system may fail if it cannot handle a Transaction ID larger than 2,147,483,647.

Note: If your merchants need to make updates to their Transaction ID architecture, they should do so prior to October 1, 2008, to ensure that they will not be affected.

Best Customer Support In The Industry

We appreciate the overwhelming and positive feedback we've received from resellers and merchants alike on the investments and improvements we've made to Customer Support. Over the past few months, Authorize.Net has aggressively worked to shorten our hold times and ensure customer satisfaction anytime a merchant needs assistance. We're excited to report that our service levels have returned to the levels you've come to know and expect from Authorize.Net throughout the years, and we continue to invest in offering additional support services and resources.

• Authorize.Net Knowledge Base
  In addition to increasing the number of customer support agents answering your merchants' calls, e-mails and chats, we've also added a self-help Knowledge Base available 24/7 at http://www.authorize.net/help that has comprehensive answers to virtually any customer support question. The Knowledge Base also includes links to the Merchant Interface Help Files and Demos. We strongly recommend that your merchants start with the Authorize.Net Knowledge Base anytime they have a question about any aspect of their payment gateway account.
• New Product and Service Training Videos
  In the next few weeks, Authorize.Net will be releasing the first of many new demonstration videos, created to assist you and your merchants with the most common questions about the payment gateway and the Merchant Interface. These demos include easy-to-follow instructions given by an Authorize.Net employee at a comfortable pace. The demos will be available for you and your merchants to access anytime on our Web site. Stay tuned!

Help Your Merchants Fight Fraud This Holiday Season

Regardless of your merchants' size, product selection or expertise, online fraud is a threat to their business. At Authorize.Net, we want to help your merchants protect themselves this holiday season. Starting October 1, 2008, and going through January 31, 2009, your merchants can try the Fraud Detection Suite™ (FDS) for free. There are no commitments, no obligations.

FDS is a simple way for your merchants to help protect their business from potential losses. Benefits include:

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

Any non-FDS enabled merchant who signs up anytime between October 1, 2008, and January 31, 2009, will see a $5 fee on their monthly billing statement for the FDS service. However, a corresponding credit in the full amount will also appear on each statement. To continue enjoying the benefits of FDS after January 31, 2009, merchants simply do nothing. They will continue to see a $5 FDS fee each month. To cancel FDS, merchants will need to contact customer support prior to January 31, 2009 to avoid further charges.

To sign up for FDS, 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 FDS immediately.

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

eCheck.Net® Holiday Promotion

Did you know that according to NACHA—The Electronic Payments Association—there were more than 18 billion ACH payments processed in 2007, a 12.6 percent increase over 2006, and that the number of ACH payments processed continues to double every 5 years across all transaction categories? If you're not already offering your merchants eCheck.Net®, Authorize.Net's exclusive, fully integrated electronic check service, you're clearly missing a significant sales and revenue opportunity.

eCheck.Net allows your merchants to accept and process payments from consumer and corporate bank accounts directly from their Web sites or through the Virtual Terminal. When your merchants sign up for eCheck.Net, they not only expand the payment options available to their customers, but they provide you with an additional revenue stream. To help get a jump on the holidays, we are offering you and your merchants the following special promotional pricing for all merchants who apply for eCheck.Net by the end of the year:

To enable this promotional pricing for your account, please contact Reseller Support at 888-437-0481 or resellersupport@authorize.net. We hope you'll encourage your merchants to take advantage of this offer and sign up for eCheck.Net today at http://www.authorize.net/files/echecknetapplication.pdf.

Merchant Interface Training For Resellers

Many of you often receive questions from your merchants about various aspects of the Merchant Interface. The top two we'd like to cover in this newsletter are the Address Verification Service (AVS) and how to retrieve a forgotten login ID or password.

• Address Verification Service (AVS)
  The Address Verification Service (AVS) is a standard feature of the Merchant Interface that allows merchants to compare the address information supplied by their customers with the address information on file at the customer's bank. The payment gateway then returns a response code indicating the results of the comparison. Merchants can choose whether or not to accept those transactions based on that code. AVS is a simple, yet effective, tool that every merchant should be utilizing to combat fraud.
  
  The main AVS page in the Merchant Interface lists all AVS codes and what they mean. Although there are numerous combinations of AVS settings to configure, we have preselected the most common ones. However, any setting can be modified to suit your merchants' individual business needs. Merchants can access and change their AVS settings from within the Merchant Interface by clicking Settings under Account in the main menu on the left, and then clicking Address Verification Service under Security Settings. There they can check the box next to each code they would like to reject and click Submit to save the changes. The payment gateway will automatically reject any transactions with the selected AVS codes.
• Forgotten Login ID/Password
  If a merchant forgets either their Merchant Interface login ID or password, they can retrieve that information by simply using the Forgot Your Password? and Forgot Your Login ID? links found on the Merchant Interface login page.
  • After clicking the Forgot Your Password? link, merchants need to enter their login ID and e-mail address in the fields provided. After clicking Submit, the payment gateway will send an e-mail with a link to a secure Web page where they must provide their login ID and their Secret Answer to their Secret Question to reset their password.
  • After clicking the Forgot Your Login ID? link, merchants need to enter their e-mail address, first and last name, and a security code as it appears on the screen. After clicking Submit, the payment gateway will send an e-mail with a link to a secure Web page where they must provide their Secret Answer to their Secret Question to display their login ID.

Merchant Billing Emails

In an effort to minimize the amount of automated e-mails your merchants receive from Authorize.Net, we are no longer e-mailing their monthly billing statement notice. All billing information is accessible via the Merchant Interface 24/7 from any Internet-connected computer. Upon logging in, they can access their current invoice, as well as their entire billing history, by selecting Statements under Account in the main menu on the left. New statements are available on the first of each month.

Simple Checkout

In late April we released phase one of Simple Checkout, a new integration method for connecting to the payment gateway. Simple Checkout allows your merchants to create Buy Now and Donate buttons from within the Merchant Interface, and is ideal for specialty merchants that typically sell one item (in any quantity) per order, and organizations that rely on donations. When a customer clicks a Simple Checkout button, they are taken to the Authorize.Net secure, hosted payment form to complete the transaction.

Simple Checkout can be used with our value-adding services, like eCheck.Net and the Fraud Detection Suite (FDS), as well as our standard payment gateway fraud detection features like Card Code Verification (CCV) and the Address Verification Service (AVS). If you are interested in participating in a Simple Checkout training session, please e-mail training@authorize.net.

We Want To Hear From You!

As a valued Authorize.Net reseller, your feedback is key to helping us identify the current challenges in the payments industry, and how we can help you by providing merchants with the highest quality payment products and services. Please take a moment to complete a brief survey. All responses will be confidential.

Conclusion

Again, thank you for your help in making Authorize.Net the premier payment gateway. We appreciate all that you do and look forward to yet another busy and successful holiday season. If there is anything we can do to help you sign up new merchants or support your existing ones, give us a call at 888-437-0481 or e-mail us at resellersupport@authorize.net.