And this is not the only recent improvement.
"We've just upgraded a new redundant system that allows us to be bicoastal now," says David Peterson, President and CEO of Jettis. "This gives our clients better service. We used to have a lot of co-location facilities offshore, and now we've incorporated three of them — one in Europe, one on the East Coast in Florida, and one on the West Coast in California. These are hosting facilities."
The drive within Jettis to keep improving and stay at the head of the pack in its field scored a major coup a year and a half ago, when the company purchased 365 Billing.
"It's our third-party product now," Peterson explains. "Some of our clients wanted to go up as a third-party business, so acquiring 365 allows us to offer it under the same umbrella. It allows us to transfer the third-party feature to a merchant account without having to jump through all kinds of hoops."
Reducing the number of hoops that clients must negotiate is at the core of the firm's philosophy. Now that Jettis is both a third-party credit card processor and a first-party gateway merchant account processor, the company can offer its clients a myriad of services.
"We basically cover the whole gamut," Peterson boasts. "We have customer service, fraud control, fraud scrubbing, and technical integration. We help people get their own merchant accounts, and we either do all of their services for them, or people can choose from our menu which services they require. A lot of people are looking to diversify their portfolio, and are looking to get their own merchant account in addition to having third-party processors."
Of course, most of the other major online processors boast of the same services now, but Peterson believes that Jettis stands apart from all of them by having one major advantage.
"We're integrated with more banks than any of our competitors," he says. "This allows our clients to diversify their portfolios. Our competitors don't have nearly as many bank integrations as we do, because we're connected with more than 30 different banks worldwide.
"I'm not sure many of our competitors can offer the multiple time zones that we have with all of our offices, either. We give them West Coast, East Coast and European time zones. And we're priced competitively compared to the other online processors. Also, I don't believe any of the other processors have their own fiduciary company. Nor do they have a financial company in-house, as we do.
"Finally, we do payouts for our clients. For example, if one of our clients needs to pay 300 affiliates, we do that for them. Sometimes a client won't have expertise in that area, so our money management company does that for them."
Jettis has simplified the process of opening a merchant account, so that anyone can do it. Clients simply have to call the Jettis sales department, where they will learn from trained experts whether it would be better for them to incorporate in Europe or in the U.S., depending on their needs.
"Then we find the appropriate bank for them, based on the portfolio of sites they advertise to the public," Peterson adds. "We make decisions based on whether they're advertising adult sites, dating sites, mainstream sites, download product sites, hardware or just shipping CDs. We offer them a shopping cart, as well.
"What they would do is call Jettis, speak to our sales department and we'll determine what the client is looking for. Then we send them the appropriate information and agreements, and get them set up. In terms of time spent getting a client up and running on a new account, we've done it in as little as 48 hours."
Most of the happy feedback from merchants centers on this speed and ease in setting up an account, diversifying it, and the money management services that Jettis offers. Called Jettis Financial, this money management company helps clients to incorporate in Europe, since Jettis has its own fiduciary company there.
Merchants also appreciate the impressive proprietary fraud scrubbing database that Jettis offers. One of the great advantages of longevity in pay processing is the opportunity to construct a large database of higher risk customers, which keeps the percentage of charge-backs down. Master Card has mandated a one percent ceiling on charge-backs, for instance, and Visa has matched that figure in its U.S. transactions, while maintaining a two percent ceiling in Europe. Jettis has been able to comply thanks to its database, and to a unique system in which clients can add their own negative scrubs.
"Jettis doesn't take on the risk," Peterson explains, "but we can set the fraud script parameters very much the same as a third-party processor would. If somebody wants to start out with a third-party scrub, we can do it. Maybe somebody has a lot of German traffic, and certain scrubs don't take a lot of German traffic. We find the appropriate scrubs. We don't take on the risk in the gateway, but we do help manage the risk very tightly with our clients."
Holding down charge-backs is the best way to keep banking partners happy, which is why Jettis boasts of so many of them. The firm works closely with its banks, talking to them every day, providing online banking reports, and running a state-of-the-art fraud parameter tool called G-2 Spider, a technology approved by Visa and Master Card.
Thanks partly to these services, Jettis has a wide mixture of clients, about half of which are in the adult business. Peterson thinks he knows why so many have chosen his company over others.
"Jettis is a natural fit for most adult clients," he says. "Now, with everyone looking to diversify their portfolio, no one wants to be with one processor anymore. A lot of affiliate programs that have been around for years are now looking to get their own merchant account, and they need somebody who will help them manage it. They're not eager to take the risk that's involved, so Jettis can do for them everything that a third-party can do, while still allowing them to have their own merchant account. They have access to their money, whereas in a normal third-party billing situation they don't."
Peterson believes that this new trend toward lower risk merchant accounts is fueling a major change in the landscape of online payment processing.
"We're seeing a tremendous amount of growth," he says. "It seems that the marketplace itself is growing."
And along with it, so is Jettis.
