New Merchant: Ikobo - (low fees & adult friendly)

I'd love to see this new merchant added to aMember's payment plugins:
https://www.ikobo.com/cp/adult-merchant-account.html

integration info available here:
http://www.ikobo.com/ipn_manual.pdf

Would this wish be possible and if so, what version do you estimate?

-v/r,
Fred

yatefs look here for more info: http://www.cgi-central.net/forum/showthread.php?t=2239

a few of us are waiting for this one to

thx Miko, will do.

I'm eager about Ikobo myself.

Good luck Alex

-v/r,
Fred

PayPal recently closed my account based on chargebacks made by selling non tangiable goods, so I am looking at other Payment methods.

Ikobo looks promising because it looks like it offers an ATM/Debit card like PayPal did, which I used all the time.

The downside to Ikobo is that it does not seem to have the flexible integration that PayPal does. On their system, you have to create an "item" on their site for a single sale, and you must enter a price.

I write my own shopping cart program and IPN processer, and unfortunately, Ikobo does not have the option like PayPal did where all you had to enter was and amount and price as well as a "custom" field that I use for the IPN script.

Ikobo could easily compete with PayPal if they had this option. Stormpay on the other hand, has these options, but no ATM card :/

ikobo

For me a great advantage is that I can choose what percentage of the fees should go to my buyers and what percentage should go to me and a very important feature iKobo accepts payments from more countries than most payment processors. Also I advise you to talk with Live Chat from iKobo's page. They might give you suggestions to help you with your problem. They are very polite and helpful.

Ikobo has both good an bad sides. An idea would be using more than one payment option in order to give the client a choice. With ikobo there is the advantage of a pretty much worldwide coverage, while paypal for example is more popular. One must decide what to use in order to better suit his/her needs.

Travis, can you list out potential disadvantages of using Ikobo (aside from lack of popularity). I'm considering a switch to this merchant, but I'd like to know more about what I'm getting into.

-thx,
Fred

Ikobo's shopping cart becomes a little difficult to use when adding a lot of items (over 1000), that of course isn't a problem if you don't want to add so many items.

Have you decided yet? Are you using ikobo or something else? About the lack of popularity, I think lately this is beginning to change since I notice that more and more people are starting to use them either for p2p money transfer services or merchant account. Guess I haven't made such a bad choice after all.

I'm debating and trying to learn more details about the trade-offs between Ikobo and Paymenow.com. One of those two merchants will probably be who I go with. I'm securing $120K for business expansion costs, so initial merchant/gateway set-up fees are not a primary concern. A reliable long term, lower fee, adult merchant solution is my primary focus.

-Fred

Hmm, paymenow? Never heard of them and I've been in this business for a while. Are they new or something? I see that they don't offer a merchant account, you'll have to sign up for one yourself... more fees, more time lost.

True about the hassles of obtaining one's own merchant, but I think the total costs will be less than the 14% rake that ibill, ccbill, and volpay are taking from adult webmasters. I'm probably gonna go the route of paymenow.com and see how they work-out.

Alec, do you have any plans to incorporate them into aMember at some point?

-Fred

I think that in ikobo's case, at least that's what they say, they hold a percentage of the amount for a while (25 days or something like that) until they release them. This applies for high-risk industries such as adult. I don't think there's a larger fee involved, just this hold of funds. I'm not sure I'm 100% correct; if I'm wrong I welcome any corrections.

PS. Who's Alec?

I thought Alex/or Alec was the guy who coded aMember Pro. Ikobo still seems appealing to me. Do you know if new consumers require a sign-up through Ikobo (similar to Paypal) or can they just do a direct credit card purchase?

Do you know of any example sites that implement an Ikobo cart or membership subscription structure? Also do consumers need to add funds to their Ikobo account in order to have funding to make a purchase? I've heard of some merchants doing that and I wasn't sure if Ikobo did or not?

Additionally, does Ikobo offer VISA to adult vendors without any deposits or fees?

-Fred

How about paymenow.com? Are they supported by aMember?

-thx,
Fred

Oooh, sorry, I didnt know about that!

The sign-up of customers is done automatically, but yes, it's a requirement. I've spoken to some folks over at customer support and they said they're working on removing this requirement in the future.

Not right now, but I think a simple google search may answer your question(s)

No.

I think so. Pretty sure about this actually.

Hope I helped a little. Good luck!

Thanks Travis, this is good info to aid in my decision making.

-Fred