Actinic Payments first review

[outdooraction]

Hi all
[before i start im writing this as someone who didnt have a psp, but processed order through a pdq machine]

We have been set up on the new actinics psp service and just want to write a few words about it.
We are on the pilot sceme and been using it for the first time over the last few days.
First impressions are extreammly positive, having the preauthorize set up and all the buttons within actinic has made life about an hour a day quicker, also having the refund button there will speed up our returns procedure for our customers.
We are with RBS, and we require 2 merchant numbers one for the website payment and a second for moto payments through the offline orders tab in v9. this may well vary from bank aquirer if 2 numbers are required

Beacuse actinic doesnt have a live stock control, there are times when we have either sold out or over sold, because we have set it up on preautherize money doesnt get taken till i say so, which does look good on the customers point of view.

The look of the psp page is very professional and very soon will have a limited adaptedability to your own website.

The niggles we have had are, when taking maestro, Seceure code has to be enabled, which in turn has enabled it on both visa and mastercard, we havent seen to much of a problem so far, but a couple of orders havent gone through because its there, [unsure if this is not good because of revenue, or good because it wasnt a fraud user]

The reports are very versitile and can be accessed online at any time, can be viewed from day to day on multiple days up to years. and also when being debited to your account over nigh show up in either visa, mastercard or maestro.

All in all we have been very please with what we have now, and i just want to send my praises to Neil, Darren and Daniel at actinic who hasve been a fantastic help with all my questions and problems we have had over the past week, [Pay rises are needed for this lot]

if anything elses pops up ill let you all know, or if you have questions fire away.

PLEASE STOP PLACING TEST ORDERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! HERE IS A SCREEN SHOT

[RuralWeb]

hmmmm cannot say I'm that impressed tbh. Basic things like shop name and SSL certificate are missing. Also the logo looks pants if this is to become a credable system then it needs to have some brand - all actinic means to most people is a hair loss problem. I thought it wasbuilt on the biggest provider in the Market not a hairdressing salon.

Sorry I'm not that positive but as jo public I would not put my card details in

[TraceyHand]

hmmmm cannot say I'm that impressed tbh. Basic things like shop name and SSL certificate are missing. Also the logo looks pants if this is to become a credable system then it needs to have some brand - all actinic means to most people is a hair loss problem. I thought it wasbuilt on the biggest provider in the Market not a hairdressing salon.

Sorry I'm. Of that positive but as jo public I would not put my card details in

I have to say I was less than impressed also.
The payment page itself is 'bland' looking and, as Malcolm says, doesn't inspire shopping confidence.
Additionally, there's a security warning bug in Firefox so I've been deterred from putting AP live yet ..this is supposed to be getting sorted for 8.5.4/9.0.2 so we'll see what happens then.

Sure, the reporting etc is good..I delved about a bit. The interface in Actinic with 9.0.1 is obviously a big plus (I'm on 8.5.3 so can't comment on that yet) and being able to set things like address/postcode/cv2 checking and 3d secure from the 'configure method' option in Actinic is good too (when you know it's there )

I'm just not 100% convinced yet...but we'll see

[RuralWeb]

thinking about it a bit more I think I prefer the old SSL page at least it did not look like you were buying hair conditioner.

I cannot believe they have been working on this all this time to get it so wrong. Yes the reporting may be good but you need sales first. They need to read the recent thread about SSL.

[RuralWeb]

perhaps the op would like to give us his online order figures before and after fitting ap also the checkout abandondment figures to illustrate if the new system has improved things or not. I'm not really that interested in post sales stuff I want good conversions and this does not look good so far. I will need to hear of a good number of increased conversions before I move anyone from hsbc onto it

I'm not completely negative as I have a client who is interested in it but it will take alot to convince me to recommend a change.

[Jan]

I like Actinic payments, as soon as I can, I will move to it, there are a couple of admin issues stopping me ATM but like my move to business post for a courier where suddenly all parcels sent were delivered, I think that moving to Actinic payments will ensure that all payments are taken (and they certainly are not ATM)

Regards,

[RuralWeb]

how will ap ensure payments are taken??? Clients I have on other psps get very few failed payments so I don't see how it will improve things unless I'm missing something.

[leehack]

The worst thing about this all IMO is the way it has lost impetus and in both recent versions releases, it doesn't do as fully expected and now has to be fixed. I have had a real good feeling over this for the past few months, i am just plain bored waiting to see it happen now. I have 2 builds on hold until V9 is classed as stable and AP is released and working, it's crazy really that we are now thinking of using 8.5.2 instead on one of the builds.

Brand name aside, the worst problem i see with this is the very unfair bad press it will get when it goes down and is not working. I don't see a way round this unfortunately, after years of trouble free service with HSBC, plus some exceedingly generous compensation payments after, HSBC is still publically flogged, you can just imagine what will be said about AP when it happens.

Lets all keep our fingers crossed and hope that the delays are because this is going to be released without a hitch and bring a smile to many of our faces. However bad it may look, i simply cannot wait to get rid of Actinic shared SSL, that is a definite 8-pinter.

[TraceyHand]

I think 3d secure/Mastercard securecode are to 'blame' for the majority of payment drop outs so I don't see AP making any difference there.

Compared to Protx, however, I would expect to see an improvement as I get a number of customers call me because they are unable to proceed to the Protx pages.

I still get a significant number of 'unpaid' orders that should have gone through Protx and, for whatever reason (browser/3d secure) don't.

As long as that improvement (assumed improvement, obviously) isn't cancelled out by customers being deterred by the 'look/feel' of the interface, that is.

[RuralWeb]

I would assume that 3d will exist on ap as well so I cannot see how it will improve failed payments. As lee says if it goes down and there are lots of actinic sites on it then the cost to actinic could be huge.

I will not have any sites using it for a long time yet so I will watch user experiences with interest.

[Darren B]

Compared to Protx, however, I would expect to see an improvement as I get a number of customers call me because they are unable to proceed to the Protx pages.

To me this is not an issue, i do wonder how much users effect this and also hosting issuess, If i have a problem payment i normaly get an email sayin they did not understand the 3d thingy or the payment 3 orders later, maybe a bit of clicking back aswell

As for the AP i found the payment page completely amature to be honest, a custome page to suit the site really needs to be avaliable, im not saying it cant have actinic on it but jees it is bloody awfull.

As for when it go's down, your right it will probabaly get a bigger kicking than the others, for ages everyone has praised HSBC but i think the last few months has shown that it is not a case of if but when. Regardless of the compensation offered, it happened twice. Protx got a slagging for there upgrades, caused no end of problems for some and very little for others. But they got a beating. I hope actinic have there tin hats on when it does happen.

ooh i see no one has mention GC lately

D

[Mike Hughes]

I agree completely. The page has to be fully customisable.

For a customer to order they have to trust the people they're doing business with and that means both the shop and the payment processor. So there are really only two sensible options for successful integration of a PSP.

1. Use a brand that people will know and trust (i.e. HSBC, paypal etc) or

2. Make it look like your website as they already have enough trust to order from you.

Anything else and you're asking for trouble.

Ignoring the look for the moment. The layout of the payment page is completely useless. Who in the world thinks that the way to show an address is to split it into 2 columns? Completely illogical and unreadable.

Mike

[RuralWeb]

nothing against the op but why test a new psp with a user who has never used one before. To someone who has only used SSL and processed offline then this would look like the Hubble space telescope but put up against a current Psp it looks like one of those plastic telescopes you buy at Blackpool.

I cannot understand why the test group did not include users experienced in psps as all these issues would have been spotted immediately and an this negativity avoided. If there were any experienced psp users involved then they were not up to much IMO.

Unfortunately things move on fast in the ecommerce world and the trend now is for the use of third party card holders eg good old GC. It is now over a year since I started the wish list for gc and I must say that I now join the people who argue that gc is a must have for ecommerce as g is integrating it into everything it does.

[leehack]

My reaction when I first saw the page was the same, WTH are those addresses doing, surely beside each other and displayed as we actually read/write addresses, thus reducing the length of the page by half is a much better idea.

I thought the colours and the design looked very dated too, so also hope that will become customisable. This forum actually looks more modern than AP at the moment. I liked the clear amount on show, in fact I would say this could even be a bit clearer, but the overall look is just second grade IMO. It simply has to look more professional, all it does mainly at the moment is make me think what on earth is this, instead of filling me with confidence.

It needs to be softened with rounded corners to look more modern also I feel.

I've seen enough design from the actinic end, why don't you throw up a design contest to get some ideas on how it could look.

[leehack]

To someone who has only used SSL and processed offline then this would look like the Hubble space telescope but put up against a current Psp it looks like one of those plastic telescopes you buy at Blackpool.

This is a very funny analogy.

Maybe Actinic are marketing to the smaller sites and thinking a little smaller than we hopefully were. I find it hard to believe that any of my more successful sites would be chomping at the bit to have this included, that's a shame as I had (and still do have) great hopes for this. It just looks out of tune with what people want and this seems to be a recurring theme from my corner. I'd like to see what the masses think to gauge a real opinion. For Actinic Shared SSL users, this will be a great improvement i guess, so a more rounded opinion, especially from it's target audience is probably wise to listen to IMO.