Thread: Merchant Accounts in Panama - GREAT INFO

The ONLY way for "true anonymity" is to open a corporation/foundation/bank account and then give "signatory" power to your lawyers and have their names on the accounts of everything. Have them have absolute power of your affairs. It doesn't take a genius to see WHY they would love to pitch you such a package after reading the rest of this thread.

So unless you're willing to give up your power, then your name will be on the accounts. And if your name is on the accounts, it is traceable to some extent.

I think the classic saying: "If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is." applies here.

Good luck,
Matt

P.S. If you want me to introduce you to the best credit card processor in Panama, let me know. They're very solid, but you'll be the one on the account.

Matt knows A LOT of people in the banking world in Panama.

Yes!! Thank Goodness for Google....

Okay, thanks No-Non-sense-Matt for the knowledge. I wll have to initially consider then. Oh yeah "DSC" requested that I put the link up so you guys wouls know what I'm referencing: Payment Processor Account.

Also, no-nonsense do you have a pyment processor that does what the above link references. Yes, it's possible that it is to good to be true!! But again if you all know different I would love to verify. Oh yeah and I would also like that info on the credit card processor that you have their in Panama as well.

Lastly, I thought per the many threads that "Panama" was compromised given the treaties they signed?!

Your Thoughts?

Justin-time

The credit card processors for ecommerce in Panama stinks. You will need an "on-shore" backup processor to be successful.

Best wishes, Ed
PANAMA BANK GUIDE - LIST OF BANKS IN PANAMA

Ed,

I disagree. Yeah - there's some downsides. However, overall they're solid. And if you have a good relationship with them, they'll help you quite a bit. And I do have several "onshore" merchant accounts... however their downside is A LOT steeper on other levels. And there have been MANY changes in the "onshore" side of the merchant account world in the last few months and more is coming. There's no perfect solution anywhere is my point.

Matt

Justin-Time

First, I just checked the site and there's nothing special about it and I don't see where they promise things will be "anonymous" except for the part where they say "This allows you to store profits in your offshore corporate, foundation or trust bank account anywhere in the world without ever revealing the bank account to any of your clients or customers. This is important for asset protection since one cannot attack something one does not know even exists."

This is true no matter what merchant account you use. If someone purchases a product from your online site, they won't know what your bank account is. So, there's nothing special there. This doesn't make your merchant account or your bank account "anonymous". However, I will say this merchant accounts can be a powerful way to funnel income into different places.

As "JustSayWooHoo" hinted -- I'm very good friends with some people at some banks. We go to dinner and they tell me how things REALLY WORK including many things that aren't said publicly -- and this information can be quite valuable at times.

Matt

Originally Posted by Justin-time

Yes!! Thank Goodness for Google....

Okay, thanks No-Non-sense-Matt for the knowledge. I wll have to initially consider then. Oh yeah "DSC" requested that I put the link up so you guys wouls know what I'm referencing: Payment Processor Account.

Also, no-nonsense do you have a pyment processor that does what the above link references. Yes, it's possible that it is to good to be true!! But again if you all know different I would love to verify. Oh yeah and I would also like that info on the credit card processor that you have their in Panama as well.

Lastly, I thought per the many threads that "Panama" was compromised given the treaties they signed?!

Your Thoughts?

Justin-time

I have accepted credit card for 7 years without a single chargeback or refund.

In Panama I started with CVV checking forced upon me resulting in a total reject rate of 27 %.

If I would have closed the on-shore account I would have lost 27 % of my business.

After 6 months of screaming the CVV requirement was dropped. Now about 5-10 % of my sales don't work in Panama. I check the return code and run the transaction on-shore 10 milliseconds later and it always works.

There are a few reasons for this:

1. Noone cares to follow up on technical glitches in Panama.
2. The default processors they use here are not always the best.
3. Transactions in Panama will sometimes be rejected by default by the credit card issuer. Fraud screening I guess.

So overall, if you take the package as is here in Panama, it's complete junk and will destroy your business (or prevent you from creating one). If you put a 50k CD as security for the processing I am sure they will remove the CVV requirement right away.....

Best, Ed
PANAMA BANK GUIDE - LIST OF BANKS IN PANAMA

Originally Posted by No-Non-Sense-Matt

Ed,
I disagree. Yeah - there's some downsides. However, overall they're solid.

Well it sounds like you're a legend in reducing refunds and chargebacks. Put together an ebook on the subject and I'll be the first to buy. I don't know how many transactions you've done -- but if it's over 250,000 and you haven't had 1 refund or chargeback -- you're officially a legend in my mind.

As far as the rest of it... "Destroying your business or prevent you from creating one?" My friends and I have are living proof that what you just said is non-sense. There's no need to exaggerate or bash people. You're obviously frustrated with the situation and you're letting your emotions smother your logical arguments. The system isn't perfect -- however if you take the time and energy to build relationships with the right people, they take VERY good care of you. If you don't -- well that's another story for another day.

Matt

Do you sell to a specific market or the whole world?

I sell to the whole world and have to deal with countries that do not have AVS (addresses) and banks that never enter the encryption keys for their customers credit cards (CVV fails).

Do you enforce CVV?

Checking the CVV status for all my on-shore transactions I would have had a 27 % failure rate in Panama, no question about it. I don't have and will never have 1 year to get such a requirement removed. Even with it removed I would lose 10 % of my business.

I agree, in Panama you need "relationships" for the most basic $hit to work....

Originally Posted by No-Non-Sense-Matt

As far as the rest of it... "Destroying your business or prevent you from creating one?" My friends and I have are living proof that what you just said is non-sense.

We sell to the whole world (however -- I take some countries out to avoid fraud) and we've played with our settings quite a bit to "optimize them". Our system seems to work well -- and we test EVERYTHING. I'm one of the most hardcore optimizers you'll ever meet. I can assure you of that.

Like I said (and I'm serious) -- I'd love to hear how you haven't received 1 chargeback or refund in 7 years. Even if you just processed 10,000 transactions -- that would be a strong track record.

The bottom line is, I still use both and overall I'm very happy with my Panamanian merchant accounts and we do NOT lose 10% of our business using this system vs. an onshore merchant (we've run tests). That being said -- we focus our marketing to mainly 1st world countries (however we sell to ALMOST every other country).

Matt

I require only the card number and expiration date to be correct.

Everything is corp-2-corp purchases, low volume, high ticket.

I guess if you had the same requirement, only cc number and expiration date, you would lose 5-10 % of your sales. Impossible to know since you seem to be enforcing parts of the AVS and CVV.

Best, Ed

I guess we're dealing with different beasts. And that's why I didn't like your "blanket statements". And like I've said -- it comes down to RELATIONSHIPS which I've got. And like I said -- if anyone needs a good intro with the merchant account bank, private message me. I've already helped quite a few guys save a lot of time, energy and money.

Matt

P.S. Ed -- just curious what markets/niche you deal with?

Universities and corporate R&D centers.

Actually, I didn't start it :-). The bank here in Panama promised me that everything would be identical to what I already had. They lied.

Then they needed 6 months to build a "RELATIONSHIP" in order to fix the damage done to my business due to their lies. I sure as hell didn't need 6 months to build a relationship after providing 250 pages of documentation, paying $1500 for a due diligence...

It think it has to be assumed that you have no relationship when you arrive in Panama.

so any reliable merchant accounts for high risk business in panama ?

Originally Posted by nich

so any reliable merchant accounts for high risk business in panama ?

Panama and high risk dont go hand in hand.

Banks here dont like risky merchant accounts and take them.

Easiest place we've worked with for merchant account is credit corp.

Hello,

Is anyone willing to pass along the name/website of a trusted merchant account provider in Panama?

My business is web hosting. Low risk. We currently process about $15k per month. We've had an "onshore" merchant account for the last 6 years and have less then 1% chargeback rate.

I'm considering to switch things to offshore... but would like to take a look at the specific "numbers" before really pursuing seriously.

Thanks!

You can try Credicorp and Multibank. I assume you don't care about CVV checking due to your customer type. You need to negotiate this up front. Multibank refused me due to this. Credicorp lifted restriction after 6 months.

I would rather do CVV checking, if possible. But it isn't critical, as most of our customers are trusted. (ie: We don't get a lot of "out of the blue" customers, so fraud isn't a big problem...)

Well, you can still check the result of it. The option would be to manually void the transaction if you are unsure. I am not able to check the results of AVS but don't really need it.

For fraud checking, we rely mostly on two things:

1. maxmind.com -- every new transaction goes through maxmind's fraud screening.

2. A customer transaction that has maxmind "fraud score" higher then our specified threshold receives a phone call. We then manually verify the order...

This keeps our fraud transactions very low.. so "extra's" like AVS and CVV are useful, but not critical. We mostly rely on other things, since both of those can be so easily circumvented.

Thanks for the info, everyone. What do you think about these guys?

Panama offshore banking

Starting a corp is pretty much a standardized form - should take them about 30 mins, then send someone to a notary. In the US you can get a corp for a few hundred bucks. How much are they charging?

Originally Posted by Jose

Thanks for the info, everyone. What do you think about these guys?

Others gave up on merchant accounts in Panama but alternatives have come up elsewhere with the advantages Panama used to have 10 years ago. A list of countries appears in My Panama Lawyer: credit card processing