I just learned that a popular payment processor – Plimus – has banned forex vendors from using their system. I found out about this from a buddy of mine who was using Plimus to sell his forex product and one day he just woke up to find out that he was locked out of his vendor account. Upon further investigation he discovered the following e-mail sent by Plimus a mere day before his account was blocked:
Dear Vendor
We recognize that the recent announcement concerning accounts represents a significant business challenge and apologize for the inconvenience of the account suspensions for those identified as selling online auctions, Foreign Exchange (FOREX) and related products, Media and Poker chips and other virtual currency.
It is never a good time to make such an announcement. But, for these industries the credit card associations (including Visa and MasterCard) are increasing their scrutiny of merchants selling products within these online segments due to market issues.
As a result, for the protection of our other vendors, we must undertake a detailed and exhaustive review of accounts identified as being in these segments and take appropriate action. Vendors in these market segments ONLY were suspended as of Thursday, January 12th, which will mean that no further transactions can take place until further notice. If you believe your account should not be considered to be within one of the stated market segments, or if you have any questions of concerns, please contact Vendor Support directly at vendors@plimus.com.
If your account has been identified as being in one of these categories (online auctions, Foreign Exchange (FOREX) and related products, Media and Poker chips and other virtual currency), account reviews will take approximately 30 days. During the period of this review, the payout scheduled for the 15th of this month will be suspended for a period not to exceed 30 days pending our confirmation that all transactions will be honored by the card associations.
Again, we regret having to take this action for accounts in these categories.
Regards,
Ari-Plimus Risk Team
Well, I am not surprised this happened to be honest, as there are quite a lot of junk forex products out there and the refund rate for forex and forex related products is quite high. Part of the blame rests of the vendors themselves but some part of it rests with the end users who are jumpy, impatient, and lazy. They will quickly yell bloody scam if your forex product doesn’t make them a millionaire over night with little to no work (or thinking) on their part. OK, I’m dramatizing a bit here, but you get my point. People are finicky and tricky to deal with and the forex market and forex products are NOT simple for the average person to understand or use.
Forex vendors on the other hand need to stop peddling to the lowest common denominator and stop it with the “you can be a millionaire even if you posses only two fully functional brain cells” and they need to ensure that their product is easy to use and does not require wasted time asking for support and waiting for a reply. But above all forex vendors need to make sure…THAT THEIR PRODUCT WORKS. The number one reason forex products have such a high refund rate is because the majority of them are pure junk. Some “vendors” are not real vendors but scammers and opportunists who see retail forex traders – and more specifically NEWBIE forex traders – as “suckers”.
But I must say the Plimus handled this very unprofessionally. My buddy told me that he was not even given a reasonable prior notice so he can move his payment processing system somewhere else. Some internet marketer complained that:
“And you know you can’t ask the customers to wait just because Plimus is not in the good mood today. I am shocked to be informed just a day before suspension. ”
One day before suspension! Ridiculous!
Anyways, the lesson here for legitimate forex vendors is that you have to be _VERY_ careful who you entrust to process your clients’ payments. Now that Plimus is no longer accepting your business where do you go? Well there is ClickBank, Click2Sell, Paydotcom, E-Junkie, AlertPay, PayPal, etc. There are probably a boat load of alternatives.
From my experience the payment processor and affiliate platform known as ClickBank has a TON of forex related products in its marketplace, so if ClickBank decides to ban forex products too then lol it would be a sad day for forex marketers – Black Friday type of situation.
We shall see what happens next.
Oh and if you want an official explanation from the CEO of Plimus go here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZQ-HTOtNxg&feature=youtu.be
🙂 🙂 🙂