By Tom Terranova

    Despite the economic downturn, online sales have continued to grow throughout 2008. As we continue to transition to a more information-based economy, many businesses are finding that online stores are more lucrative than their brick-and-mortar counterparts. As such, secure and reliable transaction processing has become the pillar upon which all online commerce rests. For online merchants, almost everything else is secondary.
    When it comes to online adult transaction processing, Epoch leads the way as the world's oldest running IPSP (Internet Payment Service Provider). They weren't the first, but they’ve outlasted all who preceeded them. Founded in 1996 by two life-long friends from Alabama, Epoch recently celebrated its twelfth anniversary and continues to build a strong repuation based on honesty and integrity.
    When you join a membership site or pay to download adult content, Epoch is often the processor making it possible in the background. Besides providing online merchants with flexible methods for accepting payments, they also safeguard the privacy of online consumers. Epoch is also opening up the world to small businesses by enabling them to accept global payments without the need for a merchant account.
    A favorite with webmasters, Epoch is known for providing worldwide payment acceptance, support for multiple currencies, state-of-the-art merchant tools, subscription and per-unit billing, world class customer service, and a full suite of marketing and revenue tracking tools.
    During the current recession, both new and established businesses are concluding that maintaining a merchant account themselves is no longer an acceptable risk. Even though using a processor like Epoch might initially feel like an extra expense, it soon surprises its customers by benefitting them more than they had ever anticipated. For most small businesses, Epoch’s low fees are insignificant compared to the cost and risk of having their own merchant account.
    In addition to Epoch, there are a number of other online adult processors – but Epoch welcomes the competition since it helps to spur inovation. There aren't as many competitors as there used to be, though, and that number will likely continue to drop. Rand Pate of Epoch pointed out that, “Consolidation is a natural progression in any industry.” Due to the current economic climate, however, it’s becoming more frequent.
    One of the primary ways in which Epoch has risen to the top is by consistently working to offer more features, more foreign currency support, more languages, and more merchant tools. Furthermore, their innovations are the direct result of requests from affiliates.
    Another keystone in Epoch's approach has always been service. The Internet is like a storefront that is always open, so Epoch offers customer service that is always open. Whether you're a consumer or an online merchant, you can easily contact a real person from anywhere in the world, 24/7/365, in your native language. From Epoch’s homepage, It takes just one click for consumers to locate customer support phone numbers – and two clicks for merchants to reach phone numbers, email addresses, and fax numbers for a variety of departments. Or you can use Epoch’s live, online support chat.
    For online merchants and webmasters, one of the most useful perks from Epoch is their sophisticated statistics reporting. It’s easy to analyze sales figures to better understand which promotions are working best, which affiliates are the best performers, and what prices are most effective. To help generate sales, Epoch also provides the industry's most comprehensive set of free marketing tools. Cross-sells, instant upgrades, and flexible retention offers are all standard and included at no extra charge.
    Those who have tried other payment processors may be amazed to learn of Epoch's 0% reserve policy. Unlike their competition, Epoch doesn't require a reserve or a security deposit for processing. Other billing companies routinely withhold five to ten percent of your monthly sales volume. For larger companies, this can ad up to an enormous amount of money that you would probably prefer to be leveraging yourself, rather than allowing your processor to reap those benefits.
    The list of free features that Epoch offers to online merchants is unparalelled and even includes cascading billing, which gives you the ability to send any denied transactions to an alternate biller. For many types of businesses, this capability could mean a significant boost to sales. And if your site offers metered webcam services, you’ll love Epoch's CamCharge feature that allows your customers to easily purchase additional time without re-entering their credit card information. With your best interests in mind, they’ve basically  taken the primary barrier to online impulse purchases and thrown it out the window. The same feature also works with pay-per-view customers. As Steven Sondheim once said, “God is in the details.” Each of these modest sounding features can actually have a profound effect.
    If you're an online merchant or a service provider who is shopping around for an online payment processor, Epoch's Corporate Communications Liaison Rand Pate offers this advice: “One of the most important things to look for is experience. Over the years, dozens of billing companies have come and gone, but Epoch has outlasted them by remaining focused on its core competency of billing credit card transactions.” By remaining true to their mission (processing online transactions in a safe, secure environment) and complying with all card association rules (such as those relating to data storage and ethical billing practices) Epoch has raised the bar for all online transaction processors.


    Contact Tom Terranova at tom@cybersocket.com

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