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email / andrew@nonatomic.net
I finally got my merchant account (NPC) and payment gateway (Authorize.net) setup, but I'm having a problem that neither of them can figure out. I've been on the phone with them both back and forth all day (even both at the same time at one point) but they have no idea what's going on and say everything is fine on their end.
I charged my own bank card using both Authorize.net's virtual terminal and through Spreedly, and when I log in to my bank to view pending authorizations, the "billing descriptor name" says "Merchant Name Missing". But once the charge goes through, the correct name shows up. Speculating it could be my bank, I charged a friend's prepaid credit card and it said the same thing on their pending authorizations.
Does anyone know what could be going on? I'm going to call them tomorrow because I really want this straightened out before my planned launch on Tuesday. One person argued that it shouldn't matter because most customers will have credit cards and won't see the name on their statement until it goes through anyway, but I don't want to risk any chargebacks.
Thanks for the help.
Is there any merchant account provider that you guys know of that would have no problem taking my money? It would be very much appreciated.
Notifications (outgoing): Using email gateways for SMS is unreliable and only available to a few carriers. With twitter, my users would just have to provide their twitter username. My app would then send out a DM and they would get a text message from twitter.
Incoming: A simple "d soshiku [query]" sent to 40404 and that's it. My app doesn't actually offer "true texting" since they have to send their text to an email address.
The problem is, there's a couple thousand people with their phone credentials hooked up to their accounts. I would essentially have to force them to sign up with twitter if they'd like to continue using the SMS services.
Do you think this a good idea, or a foolish one? Thanks.
Edit: My site is free, though I am working on paid plans.