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Streamline ripoff

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optik

I've just received a letter from Streamline telling me a site a run will now be burdened with a host of extra transaction charges.

I spent a lot of time last year moving to Streamline to obtain a better rate through their FSB scheme and I am now getting stitched up.

The main issue is international non 3D secure transactions on debit cards for low value items.

So the site in question sells a lot of items around the £1 mark, bad enough already being charged 24p by Streamline.

Now completely out of the blue they want another 20p.

44p out of £1 - how can that be justified?

And I can't even pass this charge on because it's not possible for me to check whether a customer is going to be enrolled in the 3D secure scheme before payment processing.

I rang Streamline for an explanation and their response is that they make more money on UK transactions and less on international, fine but nearly doubling the charges overnight is just outrageous.
 
Oh and they want £15 per charge back now plus will be charging for sending paper invoices, £1.80 each.

Unbelievable
 
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I received the same letter today. Not particularly impressed. It's like the Card Payment industry is becoming ever-more inflexible by the day. I don't really think this is Streamline's fault though, it's predominantly Visa/Mastercard.

They should just plain stop processing payments on cards that are not using their latest security model and actually come up with a secure model for processing online card payments instead of relying on merchants to acquire full card data.

Cards with built-in visual two factor authentication would do the trick. Roll those out and you basically eliminate the possibility of fraud as a result of data theft.

The PCI-DSS is essentially Visa/Mastercard passing the buck for their inherently awful card security model.

I actually came here to look for alternative payment providers as a result of this today, then I saw this and figured I'd chime in.
 
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The aforementioned charges are indiscriminate of location I believe.

However on our letter, there's also new charges for cards processed that were issued outside of Europe as fined by the Card Schemes (Visa/Mastercard, etc). This may be different for others, but ours is an additional 1.17% and 5.9p per transaction, regardless as to whether it's a debit or credit card, seemingly. Though that rate will likely vary based on your sales volume and industry, naturally.
 
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Exoware said:
I received the same letter today. Not particularly impressed. It's like the Card Payment industry is becoming ever-more inflexible by the day. I don't really think this is Streamline's fault though, it's predominantly Visa/Mastercard.

They should just plain stop processing payments on cards that are not using their latest security model and actually come up with a secure model for processing online card payments instead of relying on merchants to acquire full card data.

Cards with built-in visual two factor authentication would do the trick. Roll those out and you basically eliminate the possibility of fraud as a result of data theft.

The PCI-DSS is essentially Visa/Mastercard passing the buck for their inherently awful card security model.

I actually came here to look for alternative payment providers as a result of this today, then I saw this and figured I'd chime in.
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I totally agree, they are trying to make up there losses (that's being kind) by passing on these costs to merchants because we have to put up with it.

It's as good as a monopoly in my eyes, I doubt there is any point switching - we will most likely just be the first in the firing line.

I've at least contacted the FSB to see if they can offer any help.
 
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Exoware said:
The aforementioned charges are indiscriminate of location I believe.

However on our letter, there's also new charges for cards processed that were issued outside of Europe as fined by the Card Schemes (Visa/Mastercard, etc). This may be different for others, but ours is an additional 1.17% and 5.9p per transaction, regardless as to whether it's a debit or credit card, seemingly. Though that rate will likely vary based on your sales volume and industry, naturally.
Click to expand...

I think that rate is pretty standard except for high volume customers and then the non-secure transactions have a further surcharge of 0.6% on credit cards or 13p on debit cards.

The trouble is many uk based sites sell abroad to countries were customers bank are not enrolled in 3D secure so these people get hit twice.

How they can charge for extra for an international yet secure transaction is beyond me, 1.17% on a large order is not chickenfeed and they have managed to just dip there hand in when and how they please.
 
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Indeed, these extra fees are starting to make using something like PayPal very desirable as there is suddenly very little difference in fees between Streamline and PayPal if you have a reasonable proportion of customers outside of Europe.

The only reason we take cards is so that we can capture payments from customers *whenever*, instead of relying on PayPal subscriptions or similar implementations, which kind of suck.

Direct Debit is the next best thing, but is sadly limited to UK customers.
 
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BobbyBoy said:
Why not switch to paypal?
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We do offer paypal as payment method but it looks pretty unprofessional to have this as the only way, and for UK transactions we would still be far better using streamline to paypal.
 
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I don't know they contacted them directly.

I thought this would of been the case anyway and was surprised that streamline were telling me otherwise.
 
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Just to go back to the OT for a moment...
We received a letter from streamline today, I was all ready to see new fee increases etc when in fact it's telling us they're going to start charging fees for pci dss compliance which doesn't even apply to us (AFAIK)
 
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Unfortunately PCI DSS applies to every single business, company and oganisation that processes card payments. In fact see below for a more detailed quotation from PCI Security Standard's website:

PCI DSS applies to you if you are involved in storing, processing or transmitting any cardholder data. What's more, the standard doesn't just apply to storing data electronically; it also covers manual processing and storage.
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If you want to blame anyone, go blame Visa and MasterCard!
 
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FSB sell their subscription by saying it pays for itself on the better rates you can get for card processing through Streamline, zero bank charges through the Co-Op bank and having a legal helpline. In my experience, none of these actually save money. Streamline is no cheaper even if you are a member of FSB (in some cases it is more expensive) and they soon put up their rates even if they get you in in the first place by your being in the FSB, other banks give a better service with little or even no charges, and most businesses have business insurance which has a similar legal helpline. Can anyone tell me if there is any advantage at all financially in joining FSB?

Barrie
 
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SourChocolate said:
Any examples? After Santander is just about to drop the "free banking forever" promise, there are no free (for life) business bank accounts options anymore?
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No free for life but free 12 months with HSBC i do believe, if you switch to them or open a new account.


As for streamline, well, just another nail in the coffin for micro businesses trying to earn a living and pay their taxes.
 
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I also would recommend HBSC. Their charges are very low even after their period of free bamking if you go on their internet banking option. They also have much better internet banking i.e. you can actually use it during the day without having to wait for the middle of the night.

Barrie
 
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Barrie,

If you look at headline rates, yes, you might be able to get a better deal on cards than the FSB offers, but, to be fair, when you add in sign up and monthly charges, PCI costs, etc, it is not a bad deal - sure you might get better, but there are not many other options.

Does your business insurance helpline also advise you on accounting, HR and H&S? Does it give HMRC inspection and Aspect enquiry support?

I could go on, but, it is horses for courses. I joined a few years ago and more than covered my membership costs in the removal of the Streamline joining fee alone and then saved 30% in my business insurance - for me it works!
 
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Rhyl Lightworks said:
FSB sell their subscription by saying it pays for itself on the better rates you can get for card processing through Streamline,
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It does - at least in our experience - we saved hundreds of pounds a year on the card fees alone.

Rhyl Lightworks said:
zero bank charges through the Co-Op bank
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We are currently with Santander, and with the impending arrival of a letter from them telling us that our "free for life" is over we are considering a move to the Co Op. We will save £7.50 / month (£90 / year) plus £100 / year for our overdraft arrangement fee, plus Co op offer a £25 year bonus just for being with them. This means we'll be £215 / year better off with co op - on top of the hundreds we were saving on card fees.

Rhyl Lightworks said:
and having a legal helpline. In my experience, none of these actually save money. Streamline is no cheaper even if you are a member of FSB (in some cases it is more expensive) and they soon put up their rates even if they get you in in the first place by your being in the FSB,
Click to expand...

In this case, your experience certainly differs from our own. We haven't had any fee hikes and it was certainly cheaper as our prices came down when we joined the FSB.

Rhyl Lightworks said:
other banks give a better service with little or even no charges,
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How did you get on when you tried Co op? As someone who's considering moving to them I would be interested to hear why you didn't think much of them. Also, as someone else has asked, please do let me know about any other banks with no charges for life for business banking?

Rhyl Lightworks said:
and most businesses have business insurance which has a similar legal helpline. Can anyone tell me if there is any advantage at all financially in joining FSB?

Barrie
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Yes. Hopefully the above has illustrated how we save several hundreds of pounds a year. We were thinking of not renewing this year, but with the co op bank deal, the streamline deal and the helpline - which we have used twice this year - once just last week. We also tried out the insurance service and they could save us money, albeit only £30 but every little helps.
 
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Sparx said:
Unfortunately PCI DSS applies to every single business, company and oganisation that processes card payments. In fact see below for a more detailed quotation from PCI Security Standard's website:



If you want to blame anyone, go blame Visa and MasterCard!
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Ok , well we don't store or process details as we use sagepays form method where the customer is redirected to enter their details into a page on sagepay's web site which then processes the transaction on our behalf.

We don't store any details manually, however we do take card payments over the phone (which are entered directly into sagepay's MOTO system) so aren't stored or processed by us, but are "temporarily" handled by the phone operative who's taking the payment.

So do we need PCI DSS???
 
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SamStones said:
Ok , well we don't store or process details as we use sagepays form method where the customer is redirected to enter their details into a page on sagepay's web site which then processes the transaction on our behalf.

We don't store any details manually, however we do take card payments over the phone (which are entered directly into sagepay's MOTO system) so aren't stored or processed by us, but are "temporarily" handled by the phone operative who's taking the payment.

So do we need PCI DSS???
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I was going to say no until you said you take MOTO payments over the telephone. :p

If you see this PDF file here, page 4 has a little diagram to follow to see if you are PCI compliant or not..

You will have to complete the self-assessment questionnaire for PCI DSS compliance via your PSP after presumably unless they are not enforcing it yet. Although all banks now are enforcing it as Visa/MasterCard are going to be enforcing it at the bank's end pretty shortly.
 
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Sparx said:
I was going to say no until you said you take MOTO payments over the telephone. :p

If you see this PDF file here, page 4 has a little diagram to follow to see if you are PCI compliant or not..

You will have to complete the self-assessment questionnaire for PCI DSS compliance via your PSP after presumably unless they are not enforcing it yet. Although all banks now are enforcing it as Visa/MasterCard are going to be enforcing it at the bank's end pretty shortly.
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Yeah, I realised the telephone payment thing might bring something into it as it's the only place we "handle" the card details. Albeit it typing them straight back into sagepays system...

I didn't see your pdf with the flow chart but I have found the necessary SAQ for me to fill in, so that's a start.

I got a letter from streamline yesterday advising me of new charges for all this so wanted to understand where I stand before I try and tackle them about it!
 
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