Credit Card Payments Suspended
Unfortunately I have to announce that we can no longer accept credit cards through 2CO as method of payment for our Gleni Boutique.. You can however still pay for your goods through PayPal.
Our credit card payment system was supported by the 2CO payment platform. But we have recently experienced many fraudulent payments (which were unfortunately successful ) with stolen credit cards and as a result have lost several thousand euros. Because the payment was not made directly on our server, but on the secure and protected server of the system, in this case 2CheckOut, we don’t ever know either the name of the credit card holder or the inserted data, but simply receive a confirmation from the payment system, which authorizes or declines the transaction. Why has this loss happened? Because on receiving the confirmation of payment and the authorization to ship the goods, we proceed with the dispatch of the order by courier, only to receive a request a couple of months later for a refund from the bank of the genuine holder of the credit card, whose money has been used to pay for our order. What can we do? There is nothing we can do about it, because we are obliged to refund the money to the genuine cardholder. In this way we have already shipped our goods to a thief and we have also had to refund the credit card holder from our own pockets.
Until there is a genuinely secure payment system that protects the seller, as well as the buyer, we regret that it is almost impossible for us to continue to accept credit card payments.
For customers, however, payment by credit card on the Internet – is generally very safe, so you don’t need to worry about paying for your purchases in this way (you only need to follow some simple rules). It can be more dangerous to use your credit card in the supermarket or to use a cash machine or ATM to take money out of the bank. But what about sellers, are they truly protected?
These problems with credit card payments are a real headache for us at the moment. We prefer to concentrate on the quality of our products, and would like to be able rely on a secure payment system to facilitate that side of the business. We would even be happy to pay a higher rate for each transaction, if we knew that a system would be 100% secure and easy to use for both you (our customers) and for us the sellers.
I have to say that I currently don’t know where to find a solution to all this. We will certainly be looking for another platform to try out, to allow you pay by card again soon. But we can’t take any more risks..
However, as I said at the beginning of this article – our shop still offers you the option of paying for your goods through PayPal, using your credit card. Here too we are protecting ourselves from any risk and will only accept payment from customers who are registered on the PayPal system. So, if you would like to pay by credit card and you are not yet a PayPal customer, you should register yourself with this payment system; the procedure is not difficult. You can decide which credit card to use with your account and will be asked to go through their verification procedure, and after that you can safely pay in all the many online shops that accept payment by PayPal.
We hope you will understand these measures we are taking to protect our business and that you will find the Paypal system quite easy to use. We don’t want to push you into this decision, but after our experiences of the last few months, we really cannot feel confident in shipping goods to customers who have made payment via credit card.
On the other hand, if you prefer to pay through a wire transfer – we are currently offering a discount for this method. It is a very secure method of payment, even though not so fast, but it does allow you to keep payments traceable.
Tatiana, staff of Gleni
