I am pleased by the development of a number of fine new programs which focus on assuring that ISOs receive residual payments (which have been so often promised and so seldom paid) and on reducing, if not eliminating, the amount of fraud responsibility the ISO must bear.
Many programs have debuted in The Green Sheet, and if you or your office staff are focused on Web business, the Total Merchant Services (TMS) eCom-merce program is worth investigating.
One of the things that I thought was most interesting about the TMS program is best said by Ed Freedman himself, "Our agents are able to earn, on average, $17-$20 per month, per account. This income is protected because we assume no liability for losses created by our merchants. In addition, we have an exit strategy that pays us 24 times our monthly residual earnings. All of our sales offices have the option to participate in this offer and earn 24 times their monthly residual."
Beyond the economics, TMS provides an actual contract stating the terms of the residuals paid. They do this to give you protection against suddenly losing the residual income you've worked so hard to build. Some other areas of interest are:
1. No up-front deposits or rolling reserve requirements,
2. For special risk situations, simple funding delays between 3 and 10 days are set up to control risk,
3. No surcharges for AVS,
4. Money sent via ACH to your merchant's local bank account,
5. Application fee is $50 to $95 (depending on the number of applications submitted),
6. $25 American Express Setup Rebate,
7. Guaranteed Leasing Program: A/B/C - .0295; D/E - .045. Paid directly via ACH deposit to your business checking account,
8. NOVA (the fourth-largest processor) provides ongoing customer support
9. Chargeback fee of $10.00,
10. State-of-the-art electronic commerce software with real-time credit card and check processing. (Check out a demo at http://www.totalmerchantservices.com.)
If you're thinking that this "sounds too good to be true" or "they probably do not accept the types of businesses we work with," please read the following list of types of businesses that they can accept:
If you are interested in learning more about working with Total Merchant Services, call Ed Freedman at (888) 75-TOTAL, ext. 14.
