credit limit, automated sign ups and billing

tfh

Guppy
I'm ready to ditch PayPal. I've signed up for a merchant account with Authorize.net.

I'm a little confused on how this is supposed to work.

I have a few accounts, examples:
Monthly - Credit Limit
$5 - $10
$15 - $30

I think my credit limits are all wrong for what I want to be doing.

I put in my merchant info and signed up for a $5 account. He was signed up without moderation, but nothing was charged. (I'm in test mode).

What I like is:

- Sign up:
User is charged monthly fee

- One monthly later
User is charged monthly fee again
User is charged for anything extra they purchased in the last month

In between they can purchase whatever they like (IPs, extra space, bandwitdh, etc.), up to the credit limit. If they exceed the credit limit before the month is up they will need to make a mid-month payment. Until then they will not be able to make changes to the account.

It seems like I need to change the credit limit to $0 for all accounts to get the first month charged up front, but if I do that then won't customers get charged mid month for just about everything?

How is everyone else doing it? First month free with credit limit equal to one month's fee?

Any tips would be most welcome!
 
1. Allowing account activation without moderation and account verification could invite problems. First, due to fradulent charges from those who have stoten cards and want to test whether card is working or not before trying somewhere else. Second from those who want to use hosting account for conducting fraud. This could result in chargebacks, sometime, merchant account cancellation.

2. Credit Limit serves an important function for Merchant Account. Every merchant account has a small transaction fee which is generally in the range of $ 0.20 to $ 0.35. If you have not credit limit for customer, his card will get charged no matter how small charges are ie if you charge $ 0.30 for additional domain, as soon as customer adds an additional domain, his card will be charged but nothing will credit to your merchant account. If you raise credit limit to say $ 5.00, his card will not get charged till total debit exceeds $ 5.00. When it does, the amount will be charged to the card and debit will become "0".
 
So what would be the settings to achieve this result:

- Sign up:
User is charged monthly fee

- One month later
User is charged monthly fee again
User is charged for anything extra they purchased in the last month

Do I want anniversary based billing?
 
I think, the reason why credit card was not charged - credit limit was higher than monthly fee. If you still have any issue, please open the ticket.
 
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