I have been working with an Australian Verisign Payment Gateway for about 1 year now and I can tell you, if you're using it, you should be looking around at more updated and workable provider.  Originally I chose Verisign because firstly it was the choice within the catalook shopping cart which I have been using for all the DotNetNuke stores I've done for clients, and secondly, I honestly felt at the time that their reputation and what they offer as 'perceived value' was simply a cut above the rest.

But what I've noticed about this and some other companies that used to be regarded as 'the only choice' is that these companies are beginning to be over bloated, not in touch with consumers and just a mess with their functionality compared to other 'newcomers'.

I guess what's happened is that I'm sick of making excuses and apologies for the shortcomings of others, who over time, make me look bad too.  I'll give you an example of Verisign, since the Payment Gateway was bought out by PayPal, unless you've got a bookmarked link, you can't find how to log into the 'cumbersome' interface with passwords that change every 90 days, to make even a simple change.

The interface is old and ugly and the support is woeful. It used to be good, but now it's PayPal property well, I guess they don't care about small businesses, which represent a huge part of my business.

Take that and the fact that one of my clients had a very bad dealing with eBay where they delivered goods to a client who claimed they didn't receive them and eBay automatically withdrew the funds from my clients account, and there was no recourse since it was an American delivery for an Australian sale, an $800 AU loss stung my client, an ethical and honest company trading since the 1970's, and here was I telling them that Verisign Payment Gateways were now part of the PayPal company.

They didn't want to deal at all with a PayPal based company and so I spent some time looking for other providers and finally we've got Eway - which, I had looked at prior to Verisign, but they didn't have any appeal or information that lead me think they were worth considering.  So I explained about the virtues of Verisign, but what's very cool now, is I can offer choices, competitive options and in Australia, believe me there hasn't been many, so Yay for Eway, for me at the moment!!

Anyway- I had another client tell me they were using the eway system for their payment gateway provider and I had a look around, and wow, I'm moving all my clients to this system, ditching the much antiquated and out of touch Verisign and loving the whole payment gateway provider deal which is SUBSTANTIALLY cheaper, faster support, more intuitive help, good offerings and in general, miles ahead of Verisign.

Now I got onto this whole topic today when I was checking my blogs and stats - being very impressed at how it's being picked up by search engines and other blog feeds and I visited a site that had a topic about Podcasting.  They asked me for all this information about their services, and so I filled it out wanting to hear their 'take' on the Social Media run that's happening and honestly I couldn't listed to any more than 5 minutes before I felt I had to say something about my experiences with Verisign / Paypal.

So, it's interesting, how one thought leads to another and how it puts actions into play and can be triggered by things we see on the net or around us.

That's me for another moment..

Nina Meiers