LWN, credit cards, and subscriptions [LWN.net]

First the good news: it appears that most of the issues with credit card donations have been worked out. With luck, we will actually get our hands on the bulk of the money that you all donated to us a month ago, with the rest due to arrive in September. Hopefully, this particular unneeded hassle is just about behind us.

We are, however, still without a credit card account we can use to sell subscriptions, which puts a bit of a damper on our plans. We're still working on that one. If any of you have experience with a merchant bank that is friendly toward online subscription services, we would sure appreciate any pointers you could send our way. We need to get this one solved, or it's all going to fall apart before too long.

We'll keep you posted as things happen; meanwhile, we're trying to keep the news coming as best we can. Thanks, yet again, for your support.

(Note that we didn't get any letters to the editor this week, so there is no letters page this time around).

LWN, credit cards, and subscriptions

Posted Aug 29, 2002 18:15 UTC (Thu) by stonedown (guest, #2987) [Link] (1 responses)

How about WorldPay?

Seems like either Transgaming or Mandrake use those guys, I forget which.

http://www.worldpay.com/

LWN, credit cards, and subscriptions

Posted Aug 30, 2002 0:36 UTC (Fri) by mtrob (guest, #1404) [Link]

As part of our hosting business we re-sell Authorize.net to our merchant customers. We have not had any problems with them as yet. You can sign up with them at:

http://www.e-onlinedata.com/penguix

LWN, credit cards, and subscriptions

Posted Aug 30, 2002 1:02 UTC (Fri) by hcobb (guest, #3145) [Link]

Good luck.

We juggle three different payment servers depending on the type of card, the country the user resides in and the phase of the moon.

LWN, credit cards, and subscriptions

Posted Aug 30, 2002 3:09 UTC (Fri) by otterley (guest, #3500) [Link] (1 responses)

Consider PayPal subscriptions. You don't have to set up a merchant account and costs are comparable to setting up a merchant account with a bank. Accumulated revenues can be transferred to any bank account via ACH.

LWN, credit cards, and subscriptions

Posted Aug 30, 2002 19:19 UTC (Fri) by gswoods (subscriber, #37) [Link]

You obviously haven't been following this saga for very long. The whole
reason that LWN wants to find a credit card merchanting company is that
they don't *want* to force their subscribers to have PayPal accounts.
Originally, LWN *did* set up a PayPal donation service, but many readers
complained that they didn't want to have to set up a PayPal account just
to donate to LWN.