Frequently Asked Questions

  1. Can FastSpring setup my account and my branded, customized order page for me?
  2. What makes FastSpring’s customer service different?
  3. What are the advantages of FastSpring over just getting a merchant account or versus a cheaper alternative?
  4. What are the advantages of FastSpring versus PayPal?
  5. How does the FastSpring Prepaid MasterCard (through Payoneer) work?
  6. I want to be paid each payment period using the FastSpring Prepaid MasterCard (through Payoneer). What fees are charged by Payoneer for this service?
  7. I want to reduce chargebacks. How do you help with that? How do you fight chargebacks on behalf of your vendors?
  8. Do you offer in-product purchasing options?
  9. How do I get paid as a vendor by FastSpring via PayPal without PayPal charging me a fee?
  10. How do I setup to be paid as a vendor?
  11. How often will I be paid as a vendor?
  12. How much does the FastSpring service cost?
  13. How much do I have to generate in transaction volume through FastSpring before I can get paid?
  14. What options do I have for the method of payment as a vendor?
  15. How can I see what a FastSpring order page would look like utilizing my products and the look and feel of my website?
  16. Can I have a login sent to me so I can view FastSpring’s system?
  17. Can you show me samples of existing FastSpring vendors and testimonials?
  18. Does FastSpring have a Digital Rights Management (DRM) solution?
  19. How do I track online ad campaigns, distribution partners, and affiliates through FastSpring?
  20. How are refunds handled?
  21. Do you offer automated recurring/subscription-based billing?
  22. Can end customers add bundle products to their cart?
  23. Do you offer specialized pricing for micro-transactions such as is offered by Apple's app store or Google's Android Market?
  24. If I do retrieve a license from a remote server and my server is down for some reason, is there a way to resend the order number to my server at a later time so I can get all the customer data to my end?
  25. When doing the remote servers licensing option, in what format is the customer detail sent to my server and what details are sent to me as the vendor?
  26. Can I fully customize my store layout or does FastSpring have to?
  27. Can I add checkboxes for purchasing additional items like support contracts or lifetime upgrades per product onto the FastSpring order page?
  28. Can you validate upgrade codes so only those current customers get approved for an upgrade discount?
  29. What currencies can my customers pay with?
  30. What payment options will my customers have?
  31. What languages do FastSpring order pages support?
  32. Do FastSpring customers have a way of looking up their orders online?
  33. How do I setup Google Analytics to work with FastSpring?
  34. Does Fastspring provide phone support for customers?
  35. How quickly can I go live once I sign up?
  36. Should I be concerned about FastSpring requiring Java and JavaScript for all transactions or for vendors to login to the e-commerce platform?
  37. How does the customer order approval process work?
  38. How do you handle product downloads and file hosting?
  39. What are your policies on orders using free email addresses?
  40. How does your fraud tracking work?
  41. Can I determine the content of the email message customers received after they place an order?
  42. Is there a minimum transaction fee per transaction?
  43. Is there a fee for being paid by wire as a vendor?
  44. Does FastSpring store customer credit card numbers on FastSpring servers? Is FastSpring PCI compliant?
  45. What is the uptime percentage of your servers?
  46. Is there a file size limit on files you host?
  47. How does the Purchase Order process work?

Can FastSpring setup my account and my branded, customized order page for me?

Absolutely. Just sign up at: http://www.fastspring.com/signup.php Or if you have specific questions you want to ask beforehand, drop us an email.

What makes FastSpring’s customer service different?

We pride ourselves on offering the absolute best customer service in the industry. FastSpring's policy is that all support requests are responded to within 24 hours, though we often respond in just 1-2 hours. You are assigned a Dedicated Account Manager who is a senior level industry veteran who knows the ins and outs of the business and can help you improve your order page conversion rate and maximize your revenue per customer to grow your revenue.

Doing business with a company on the Internet can be a very impersonal process. Not only have the founders of FastSpring run several Internet-related companies, we have also been — and continue to be — customers ourselves. Nothing is more frustrating than sending off an email to a company to get help only to wait for a week to get back an impersonal email with a pre-canned response that doesn't address the actual question. FastSpring is different. When you contact us, you'll receive a response within 24 hours, often within just an hour or two. A real person with a real name will respond to your question. Since we've been in your shoes, we always try to treat our customers as friends, and try to understand they are looking to us for real help within whatever problem or question they have. We encourage you to send us an email and test us out.

What are the advantages of FastSpring over just getting a merchant account or versus a cheaper alternative?

FastSpring’s all-inclusive service includes the merchant account costs, payment gateway expense, fraud protection, chargeback fighting and fee absorption, a Dedicated Account Manager, tax management, multi-currency support, multi-lingual order pages, and countless other features. You can view a listing of all of our features at: http://www.fastspring.com/services.php

Please see these links explaining more about the advantages over using a merchant account, as they are considerable:

On top of all that, the biggest advantage of using the FastSpring solution is that you can earn significantly more revenue from our order page because it is highly configurable and customizable. Our clients generally earn significantly more revenue by using our order pages than they do using their own merchant account irrespective of our fees simply because they are able to get a higher visit to sale conversion rate and a higher average revenue per order by utilizing the flexibility of FastSpring order pages to conduct testing and page optimization and to be able to add cross-sells, bundles, discounts, etc.

What happens all too often is that companies go with what an e-commerce solution that appears the cheapest but without properly quantifying the opportunity cost, the increase in revenue derived through a full service solution that far exceeds the added cost and pays dividends for years to come. Working directly with the credit card processors will cost 3.5-4%. They may tell you a lower number but the lower number doesn't apply to a large portion of your transactions, assuming you accept international orders, business credit cards, American Express, etc. not to mention you often have to pay your own chargeback fees and sometimes manage your own EU and US tax collection and management. FastSpring's pricing is 5.9% plus $.95/txn (or a flat 8.9%), which isn't substantially higher than 3.5-4%, but with FastSpring comes countless tools for optimizing your order pages, upselling and merchandising to your customers, and increasing your revenue. And unlike typical e-commerce services, at FastSpring you are assigned your own Dedicated Account Manager who is always standing by and can help you with anything you need. Your Dedicated Account Manager knows the business cold, always responds in 24 hours, and often responds in just 1-2 hours. If nothing else, you'd be wise to test a FastSpring order page against a non-FastSpring order page and you'll see instantly the increase in conversion and average order size and be able to justify the additional expense based on the far higher incremental revenue earned through FastSpring's order page.

Here is a list of some of the many advantages of using FastSpring:

  • A higher level of customer service, including a senior-level Dedicated Account Manager assigned to you who always responds within 24 hours, often just within 1-2 hours
  • The option to have your Dedicated Account Manager setup your store for you
  • A Java platform architected from the ground up to be highly flexible, adaptable, and configurable
  • An extremely easy-to-use, fast and clean user interface utilizing AJAX
  • A branded and customizable order page designed for you by FastSpring to match your website's design, at no cost to you, with various order page layout templates including a shopping cart option
  • Access to software marketing guidance, ideas, and suggested new distribution channels upon request from FastSpring's software marketing gurus
  • Full control of cross-sells, ensuring you retain more of the order page revenue for yourself instead of for your e-commerce provider, and advanced cross-sell page placement optimization
  • A fast, reliable, and secure global file distribution network utilizing Amazon.com's S3 bandwidth service
  • Advanced CD shipment support offering a painless method to sell and profit from backup CDs, plus advanced CD or DVD shipments, including custom packaging and contents
  • Dynamically-generated visual sales reports
  • Customer payments accepted in Euros, Pounds, USD, AUD, Yen, and CAD, plus order pages translated into 7 major languages
  • Automatic detection of each customer's location so your order page is localized in the appropriate currency and language for each transaction
  • Integration with various 3rd party tracking and analysis systems (Google Adwords, Google Analytics, ShareASale, etc.) to help you better understand where your visitors and customers are coming from, their demographics, your traffic trends, and to recruit new affiliate publishers and resellers
  • Real-time, reasonable fraud protections which avoid manual fraud check delays, often resulting in a larger percentage of your prospective orders getting processed as opposed to orders being blocked unnecessarily

Again, you can view a listing of all of our features at: http://www.fastspring.com/services.php

What are the advantages of FastSpring versus PayPal?

There are significant limitations to using PayPal for your online store. Take a look at this post from our blog related to PayPal:
http://www.fastspring.com/blog/2008/07/shouldnt-i-just-use-PayPal-for-my-e-commerce-payment-processing/

How does the FastSpring Prepaid MasterCard (through Payoneer) work?

The FastSpring Prepaid MasterCard provides near-immediate access to your revenues from anywhere in the world. Once revenues have been loaded onto your card, you can access your funds through normal points-of-sale, banks and ATM machines wherever MasterCard is accepted. No bank account is needed and your funds are secure. Additional fees may be charged by our partner for prepaid card setup and service. View a demo by clicking here: https://payouts.payoneer.com/partners/Default/fees.aspx?pId=4112060

I want to be paid each payment period using the FastSpring Prepaid MasterCard (through Payoneer). What fees are charged by Payoneer for this service?

There is an activation fee
  • Activation (US) $9.95 One-time
  • Activation (non-US) $19.95 One- time
Loading fees

Standard (within 3 business day) $2.00 Per transaction
Expedited (within 2 hours) $5.00 Per transaction

Account maintenance fees
  • 1-4 transactions/month $3.00
  • 5 + transactions/month $1.00
Usage fees
  • POS transaction Free Per transaction
  • ATM withdrawal (US) $1.35 Per transaction
  • ATM withdrawal (non-US) $2.15 Per transaction
  • ATM decline $0.90 Per transaction
  • ATM balance inquiry $0.90 Per transaction

Replacement of lost/stolen card $9.95 Per event

I want to reduce chargebacks. How do you help with that? How do you fight chargebacks on behalf of your vendors?

We fight chargebacks on your behalf, and if we lose we pay the chargeback fees ourselves. FastSpring's chargeback rate has been very low, about 1/2 of 1%. There are a few scenarios that are common, and here is what happens with them.

Chargebacks typically fall into 3 categories:

  1. Consumer doesn't recognize the charge and claims to their credit card company they don't recognize it. This results in a retrieval request. Many companies in our space will simply mark the order as charged back when they receive this. In general with these, we make efforts to contact the consumer to remind them what the charge was for, AND we provide a detailed receipt back to the credit card company that they also pass along to the consumer. In 75% of the cases this saves the order. In the other 25%, unfortunately the consumer will say that they didn't make the purchase and it turns into a chargeback. In most of those cases, it probably was a fraudulent charge with someone else using their stolen credit card number.
  2. The charge truly is fraudulent and we receive a chargeback stating the consumer has signed an affidavit stating they didn't make the charge. There are no options in this case. In the internet world with typical transactions, all the power is with the consumer and merchant account providers simply take back the funds with no other options. There are some ways to fight these with shipped items, if you have trackable shipping logs showing the items were shipped to the billing address of the credit card holder, but with downloadable items, there is no way to prove they, and not someone else with their card numbers, purchased.
  3. Consumer submits to their credit card company that the services weren't rendered, or were significantly not as described. This is the consumer saying they are unhappy with the product or it wasn't received. While with these we can work to make sure the consumer received the product, and detail those efforts to the credit card company, if the consumer still claims that the product didn't work or didn't work as advertised, unfortunately even with a strong return policy statement, the merchant account providers have no real financial incentive to push the consumer. The merchant account providers actually make more money on the chargeback fees than keeping the transaction, and again all the power is with the consumer. If a consumer is really going to try to cause you a problem and not pay you, they will in the end do it. However, we have found that around 50% of these types of transactions can get saved if we get in the middle of the discussions between you and the consumer and make sure we give them help getting things working.

Do you offer in-product purchasing options?

There are a few reasons we haven't developed this. One, handling all the different platforms around makes it a pretty big development task. The other issue is that while developers seems to fall in love with it, tests we've seen over the years showed that it actually converted at a lower percentage than web-based purchase pages. Our theories on why it might earn less are:

  • Some consumers have security concerns. They are used to secure browser connections and being able to verify that with the https and lock shown, but the same isn't there with in-app forms
  • Software based firewalls like ZoneAlarm will sometimes complain about the connections established by these types of in-app purchase windows, scaring people or blocking the connection
  • Depending on implementation, you sometimes have less flexibility, having to do new builds to make changes to things like upsell/cross-sell

How do I get paid as a vendor by FastSpring via PayPal without PayPal charging me a fee?

We can pay vendors using a personal PayPal account and there will be no fee for up to $500 per month in payments, provided we pay using cash payment or bank transfer. After that $500 limit the typical fees will apply. For a PayPal business account, we believe PayPal auto-charges you a 3% fee, but you’ll need to check on their latest rates to be sure.

How do I setup to be paid as a vendor?

GETTING FIRST PAYMENT

In order to receive your first payment from us, we need you to add your payment details to our e-commerce platform, Springboard, at: https://springboard.fastspring.com

Log in, click the Account link, and provide your payment information for one of four of the following payment methods (whichever method you prefer and that is applicable) listed below.

Before expecting your first payment, please allow 6-10 business days following the date you provide us your payment information in order for your account setup to be cleared in our system. After the initial setup for making payments to you is complete, you will receive payments according to the FastSpring payment cycle: most companies by default choose to be paid twice per month. With this setting, you are paid every 2 weeks with about a 2 week lag. This means that sales from the 1st to the 14th would be paid around the 30th/31st, sales from 15th to end of the month are paid around the 15th of the following month. If you have set your payment cycle to be monthly, then on the 14th or 15th of each month, you will be paid for any sales from the previous month. (The info required for each payment option below is also detailed again in the Account section once you login).

PAYMENT METHODS AVAILABLE

Payment Method #1: PayPal

Information to provide us:

  • Email address associated with your PayPal account (you can create a PayPal account easily if you don't already have one)

Payment Method #2: ACH Direct Deposit (requires US bank account)

Information to provide us:

  • Bank Account Name
  • Bank Account Type (business checking, individual checking, business savings, individual savings, etc.)
  • Bank Account Number
  • Bank Routing Number

Payment Method #3: International Wire (if you have a non-US bank account)

Information to provide us after clicking the link "Enter Other Payment Instructions" :

  • Bank Name
  • Bank Address
  • Bank Swift Code
  • Bank Account Number
  • Bank IBAN Number (if you have one)

Payment Method #4: Physical Check

Information to provide us:

  • Name to be written on your check
  • Address where the check is to be mailed

How often will I be paid as a vendor?

Most companies choose to be paid twice per month, but if you prefer you can be paid monthly. With the 2x per month setting, you are paid every 2 weeks with about a 2 week lag. This means that sales from the 1st to the 14th would be paid around the 30th/31st, sales from 15th to end of the month are paid around the 15th of the following month. If you have set your payment cycle to be monthly, then on the 14th or 15th of each month, you will be paid for any sales from the previous month.

How much does the FastSpring service cost?

You have the option to select to pay either 8.9% flat or 5.9% plus $.95 per transaction. During sign-up, specify in the comments field which pricing option you prefer; the default otherwise assumed is 8.9%. It's risk-free to sign up and use FastSpring. There are no sign-up, setup, or "special" add-on or hidden fees. You are not locked into a contract term and there is no exclusivity. Pricing includes merchant processing fees, fraud protection, tax and chargeback management, Dedicated Account Manager, etc.

How much do I have to generate in transaction volume through FastSpring before I can get paid?

The minimum account balance required for payment is $25.00 unless you require payment via international wire, in which case the minimum is $100.00 and there is a fee of $15.00 per payment to cover our international bank wire fees.

What options do I have for the method of payment as a vendor?

Payment is sent to your account bi-weekly through electronic wire transfer/ACH, check, PayPal, or through the FastSpring Prepaid MasterCard via Payoneer, unless otherwise requested.

How can I see what a FastSpring order page would look like utilizing my products and the look and feel of my website?

At no charge, we can setup a FastSpring order page for you to take a look at which uses your products. We can fully brand the order page to fit with your website if you’d like. We'll also send you a login to an account we create for you. We just need you to provide us with the following information for the first product you'd like to see setup through FastSpring (it must be a product that is listed on your website; otherwise, please let us know once it is listed live on your site and we'll complete the setup then):

  • Product Name
  • Product Price
  • Product Description
  • URL where product is described
  • Explanation of what you'd like customers to receive after they complete their purchase (email, codes, etc.)

Can I have a login sent to me so I can view FastSpring’s system?

Yes, we can send you a login. Please email us.

Can you show me samples of existing FastSpring vendors and testimonials?

Below lists a few FastSpring clients:

  • SammSoft
  • Nextup
  • MediaRecover
  • K2 Networks
  • GamesForOne
  • Acclaim
  • Irfanview

These are links to postings by a few FastSpring clients:

Here are some sample FastSpring client order pages:

We have hundreds of live clients with sites you are welcome to review and who are pleased to share their experiences with you, just let us know if you’d like more information.

Does FastSpring have a Digital Rights Management (DRM) solution?

We utilize our DRM partners' solutions for DRM because we can't be the best at everything, DRM is complex and we feel best handled by a DRM specialist. Instead of tying you to a single solution we've created, you have the option to select your preferred DRM solution, including these options for Windows applications, which we support:

If you prefer another DRM solution, just let us know, we can likely support it as well.

How do I track online ad campaigns, distribution partners, and affiliates through FastSpring?

If you have a few larger ad deals or rev share partnerships which you've set up on your own and just need to track, you can use Google Analytics (GA), as we've integrated with it. This is a great system, there is zero cost, and the tracking works very well. Take a look at the Google URL builder here, as this is where you would create unlimited tracking urls:

https://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?answer=55578&topic=10998

Info on it is here:

http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/?ctx=browse

If your aim is to get new affiliates to promote your products or to manage a large # of different affiliates, ShareASale.com (SAS) is a good option for increasing your revenue since it does everything you need in an affiliate program, including showing your products to countless new affiliates so they can opt to promote your offer and auto sending checks to affiliates. There is a setup fee charged by SAS, but the fee should come back to you once a few decent SAS affiliates start promoting you and the % is just a % of what you're paying to affiliates in commissions, so it's a % of new revenue earned. SAS is quick and easy to setup, unlike a lot of affiliate programs.

We've integrated with many of the leading affiliate networks which are focused on nothing but affiliate program growth and who have attracted the highest volume producing affiliates. Some e-commerce systems have their own affiliate network, but in our many years of experience we’ve seen time and again that the more lucrative, higher quality affiliates are found in the major affiliate networks, not in the affiliate programs developed by e-commerce firms. We also support other higher volume external affiliate programs, such as Commission Junction (www.cj.com) and LinkShare.com. If you’d like us to add support for another affiliate program or 3rd party tracking tool, just let us know, as we can often add support for 3rd party solutions quickly.

How are refunds handled?

You can do full or partial (individual line items, like just refunding the CD portion of an order) refunds within SpringBoard, our e-commerce platform. If we get refund requests, we'll send them to you for approval. *Only* if we strongly believe that an order is fraudulent or is about to turn into a chargeback would we refund without permission, and we'd explain it first. Because refunds do cost us in transaction fees, we charge 3.5% on refund transactions. On a refund transaction, the original transaction plus its transaction cost is refunded to you, you only get charged the 3.5% which covers our own transaction costs, including recovering merchant fees, overall server resources used, our potential support time for handling the refund, backup CD money we may have lost if a CD was included in the order when applicable, etc.

Do you offer automated recurring/subscription-based billing?

Currently we don't support automatically rebilling customers. It's a challenge to support as a vendor or as an e-commerce provider due to the frequency by which credit card billing information changes (card changes, expiration changes, security ID # changes, etc.), the level of chargebacks from automated rebilling, etc. However, what we can do is provide you an order page where you can bring customers to be recharged as needed. Another option is to offer multi-year pricing options for your products whereby customers are charged, for example, for a 2 year subscription, and you charge them one time at the 2 year subscription price.

Can end customers add bundle products to their cart? For example, buy 5 products in one order by only adding one item to the shopping cart.

Yes.

Do you offer specialized pricing for micro-transactions such as is offered by Apple's app store or Google's Android Market?

We charge a minimum fee per transaction of $0.75. The problem with micro-payments is that we are charged the same minimum per transaction rates by our merchant processing partners no matter how big or small the transaction size is. Email us to discuss your specific situation.

If I do retrieve a license from a remote server and my server is down for some reason, is there a way to resend the order number to my server at a later time so I can get all the customer data to my end?

It goes automatically into a retry state and will retry it a few times, then goes into a manual queue for us to retry once your server is back up.

When doing the remote servers licensing option, in what format is the customer detail sent to my server and what details are sent to me as the vendor?

We can send any and all data, and pretty much in any format that you like, it is highly configurable. If you'd like a listing of the variables available, let us know.

Can I fully customize my store layout or does FastSpring have to?

The store layout file is a .zip with html, CSS and images to be used. With about 80% of clients we'll take the first shot at matching their site and then they can tweak from there; about 20% are better at HTML than we are probably, and they do it completely themselves.

Can I add checkboxes for purchasing additional items like support contracts or lifetime upgrades per product onto the FastSpring order page?

Yes, most of this is customizable for fit your preferences and products.

Can you validate upgrade codes so only those current customers get approved for an upgrade discount?

We currently do not have the ability to do that validation of previous codes. At the moment the best option would be to have a validation form on your end, before passing them off to our order form.

What currencies can my customers pay with?

Your customers will be able to pay using Euros, Pounds, USD, AUD, CAD, or Yen. Your customers will not have to select their preferred order page currency, their location and the appropriate language and currency settings will automatically be detected and displayed.

What payment options will my customers have?

Your customers are able to pay using Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover, PayPal, check, purchase order, and money order.

What languages do FastSpring order pages support?

Arabic, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Serbian, Spanish and Swedish. If there’s another language you need, let us know, as we can often add new languages quickly. Your customers will not have to select their preferred order page language; their location and the appropriate language and currency settings will automatically be detected and displayed.

Do FastSpring customers have a way of looking up their orders online?

This may be developed eventually, but to be honest, at this point we are so fast at email support that they don't really need the online lookup. In most cases we get back to customers with codes so fast via email that they feel like they've been taken better care of than just using a form.

How do I setup Google Analytics to work with FastSpring?

Within our SpringBoard e-commerce platform, login and click to setup Google Analytics (GA) for your account under "External Tracking". You'll be given specific instructions on how to do so in 4 steps:

  • Step 1: Create a new GA website profile within an existing GA account (or create a GA account if you don’t have one) at: https://www.google.com/analytics
  • Step 2: Enter the ID Google assigned to the website profile
  • Step 3: Edit the GA website profile
  • Step 4: Save, and wait 24 hours for verification

Does Fastspring provide phone support for customers?

Customers can call and leave a message with our phone support service, but we generally respond via email. The typical path is if they do have a problem (declined card, abandon shopping cart, etc) we display a browser window inviting them to contact us or try again. If they choose contact us, they get to write us a note, and it also includes the context so we can see exactly what they are trying to order with their contact info and details about where they are in the process. Most of the time they are so pleased with how quickly we get back to them that they make sure to get the purchase complete, even if it means they have a problem with one credit card and have to try another. We know some other companies claim phone support, but in reality it is at times a bit of a smoke-screen. They do offer it, but typical hold times and the general lack of knowledge on the part of the phone operators is often so bad that it frustrates customers and ends up costing you more sales than it saves. You’d be hard pressed to find customers who have dealt with FastSpring’s support and who were anything but pleased with the email response time and quality.

How quickly can I go live once I sign up?

We can often have you live in just 12-48 hours, assuming you provide us with the product and account details we need.

Should I be concerned about FastSpring requiring Java and JavaScript for all transactions or for vendors to login to the e-commerce platform?

No. Java and Javascript are required only for clients accessing the e-commerce platform for reporting and product setup. For consumers, no Java is required. While some advanced things on order pages do use Javascript, a non-Javascript version of the order page is automatically shown for customers who do not have Javascript. This is identical to what Amazon.com and all major web retailers do. The only function of SpringBoard, FastSpring's e-commerce platform, that requires Java is uploads -- nothing else. Beyond that, the only technology ever required is Flash in order to view certain visual reports.

How does the customer order approval process work?

Once the customer completes the order form, we do immediate authorization, and one of 3 things can happen:

  1. It gets approved - we can immediately hit your server with the order details.
  2. It gets declined because of fraud check. This check is immediate.
  3. It gets declined by the credit card company.

How do you handle product downloads and file hosting?

We can host and deliver secure reliable downloads to buyers utilizing our S3 hosting via Amazon.com.

What are your policies on orders using free email addresses?

We do accept orders from free email addresses. These days, if you don't, you are just eliminating far too many customers. Especially Gmail customers who tend to get pretty angry if you deny them from using their Gmail email address when they order.

How does your fraud tracking work?

We use a combination of external fraud scoring and internal historical based scoring. There are countless order characteristics that are factored in, and most taken on their own will not prevent an order from completing. Email address and whether it is a free account is one factor that goes into scoring, as is IP address, location, distance from billing address location, country of origination, and about 10 other factors which all go into developing the fraud score. Those which are above a certain threshold fail. It is a pretty low % at this point which fail fraud checks, and we've got a very low chargeback rate, so the system has worked quite successfully for a long time.

Can I determine the content of the email message customers received after they place an order?

Yes, you can control the content, including links or codes you may want to include.

Is there a minimum transaction fee per transaction?

Yes, the minimum fee is $0.75 per transaction.

Is there a fee for being paid by wire as a vendor?

For wire payments going outside the US, we charge $15 to cover our cost (our bank charges us over $30 per non-US wire). There is no fee charged for US wires.

Does FastSpring store customer credit card numbers on FastSpring servers? Is FastSpring PCI compliant?

No. To protect against security compromises, FastSpring never stores your customers' credit card numbers. Yes, we are PCI compliant.

What is the uptime percentage of your servers?

Our sever uptime has been a steady 99.86% for the 12 months prior to August 2009.

Is there a file size limit on files you host?

Five gigabytes (5GB) is the largest single file we can handle.

How does the Purchase Order process work?

The user has gone through the normal online store, or been linked into the online store after having chosen a Purchase Order link on the client's site. Once products and options are selected, Purchase Order is one of the available payment methods.

This payment method will allow the buyer to optionally enter a PO number for their internal tracking, and then submit the PO. The system will then generate and send them an electronic, clickable or printable invoice for payment, due within XX days (configurable). The product fulfillment actions (downloads, license keys, triggering shipments) are not fired until the payment is received.

FastSpring also provides the option to allow you manually review each PO. With this setting, for each submitted Purchase Order, you get an email notification with clickable link that will take you to the details of the purchase order. Based on what you see there about the buyer and what they are buying, you can choose to:

  1. Reject it outright because it looks totally invalid/suspicious
  2. Set it to be handled as described above: delivery after payment is received
  3. Approve it for immediate delivery

This C option would generally be used if buyer is from known/established companies, someone you have worked with before, or a school/government buyer where immediate delivery is expected or better ensures closure of a sale.

If C is chosen, the fulfillment actions happen at that time, and we also send the electronic invoice payable within the configured number of days.