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ISPCON: An ISP Industry that Processes Credit Cards

Charles Wu and Layne Sisk say that ISPs can now serve a greater number of small businesses and cut out the credit card middle men.

by Alex Goldman
ISP-Planet Managing Editor
[November 11, 2008]

Orem, Utah-based ServerPlus is an ISPCON regular. The company, founded in 2000/2001, provides a variety of services to ISPs. As the ISP business gets tougher, ServerPlus does what it can to stay ahead of the game.

So I'm checking in with Layne Sisk, president of ServerPlus, to find out what's new. The economy is tough, but Salt Lake City's tech suburbs, a corporate center of excellence dating back to the founding of Novell and WordPerfect, is doing better than much of the rest of the country.

The key to gaining ground even in tough times is to always be offering new services. ServerPlus continues to work on its relationship with nearby partners PowerCode and Alianza to provide VoIP that works at every ISP, including wireless ISPs (see Alianza Opens Channel, Hopes to Reach Smaller ISPs).

"We would like to be a one stop shop for wired and wireless ISPs," says Sisk. He's looking into adding hardware distribution to the VoIP, help desk, and other services he offers.

IP Pay

Sisk is very enthusiastic about IP Pay, the service that Charles Wu of CTI discussed in detail at Spring ISPCON. "When we moved our own merchant processing to IP Pay, we saved $1,000 per month in credit card processing."

Now Sisk is using the IP Pay channel program to sell credit card processing to his customers.

Is he worried that cutting out middle men will increase the risk of fraud? "No. The reporting is the same."

Sisk is most enthusiastic about Wu's understanding of the way he does business. "We bill for a bunch of ISPs. We need to have a unique name for each ISP. We need that ISP's name to show up on the customer's credit card bill. With other merchant account providers, you need to open a separate merchant account for each ISP. IP Pay allows us to bill as many different names as we want to a single merchant account."

Sisk says that when he explains this capability to prospective ISP customers, they're ready to sign on at any price, and that the IP Pay discount is just an added bonus.