Talk:Merchant account

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This information is a good start but is lacking in depth and accuracy. I hope to remedy that. Just gotta learn how to do that now. :)

Contents 1 Verisign 2 Citatons 3 Removal of Reference Links 4 Merchant-account-services link removal - (COI) and copyright issue

[edit] Verisign

I'm not sure that verisign or paypal should be under "see also" on this page.

Any thoughts?

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Tough call. Paypal should probably stay as they are a third party processor and are related enough to worth mentioning. The only reason why Verisign should stay is because we discuss gateways in this article.

[edit] Citatons

Most, if not all of the content, in this article is from experience working in the industry. Just years of doing it. How do you cite that? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Stymiee (talk • contribs) .

It is important to remember that articles must have verifiable information cited from reliable sources. Content should not be original research from personal experience. Are there trade manuals, publications, or texts that contain this information that could be cited, at lease as a reference? -ZimZalaBim (talk) 16:23, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Would an existing page (e.g. related glossary) be appropriate? -> http://www.merchant-account-services.org/resources/glossary.php. It contains definitions of most the terms used in this entry and was the basis for some of the content (it's a reproduction of where I learned from). John Conde 13:10, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Seems like that might be a good reference. Also, we'll want to be sure that none of the article is simply copy/pasted from that site in violation of copyright. --ZimZalaBim (talk) 14:31, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

I am certain that information is not in violation of a copyright. I have created a references section in the article. If I have done this in error please let me know. If this is ok I will see if I can find any other sources that may be used for references. John Conde 17:43, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

A problem with citing specific references for this topic is that many of the processing banks or Visa and Mastercard merchant manuals which contain this information are strictly protected from making public in any way. There are essentially no trade manuals for merchant services that are publicly available that I know of, that are not from a specific provider making them biased to that organization. Any information that you find publicly is almost always written by experience, or is published illegally. I can also vouch for the validity of this article, and most of the accurate information related to merchant services is from contributors to this article. --Jestep 15:18, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

I've never heard of V/MC prohibiting the explanation of merchant fees. Just the opposite: they require disclosure of a merchant's fees on all merchant agreements. Nothing described here discloses interchange or anything between the acquirer and V/MC. --ZimZalaBim (talk) 16:53, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree with you about the fees disclosure. I am more referrring to the making public of actual merchant processing guidelines. FDMS has the best merchant guidelines that I have seen, but as an ISO we are specifically prohibited from sharing it with anyone except the merchant. If FDMS makes it public, that's aother story, but I've never seen a public copy. Also, mastercard is going to publish their interchange rates, which will make a good reference for the article, but I doubt it would cover any of the general information. --Jestep 13:44, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Removal of Reference Links

Whoever is editing from 74.192.177.173, can you address the continuing removal of the glossary link from this topic. Is there a specific reason you keep removing it? So far your actions and anonymity are not a positive contribution to this article. Jestep 21:38, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Merchant-account-services link removal - (COI) and copyright issue

I am not the above user, but I reverted this same link from another article Acquirer for the following reason.

I visited the website of the link (merchant-account-services.org) where the glossary exists. This website consists of a blog, forum, articles written primarily by one author, link exchange program, and this glossary. The site was launched in early 2006. I found the terms listed in the glossary were copied verbatim from another financial service website (merchantconnect.com) with a much longer lifespan and notability. This international company (Nova Information Systems) has been in business since 1991. Their website has a history back to at least 2000 and its glossary existed at least back in 2002. There may be an agreement or licensing between these organizations, but nothing appears on the website that indicates such.

User:Stymiee is the owner/website manager of the new merchant-account-services.org. He uses the same user id on his forum along with his name. He is the author of most of the articles on this site. He is also the user who added the link to the glossary on his website to this article.

There appears to be both conflict of interest issues WP:EL/WP:COI with the links added by this owner as well as "possible" copyright issues. WP makes it very clear that addding links to one's own website is against its guidelines. Therefore I have removed this link on this article. I also left a WP warning message on User talk:Stymiee earlier today. Calltech 00:17, 24 December 2006 (UTC)