About TemplateMonster.com
www.templatemonster.com

TemplateMonster.com is one of the best known pure e-commerce B2B companies, worldwide. TemplateMonster's business model is highly innovative, with the company being the first in the world to deliver their unique offering into the global market. TemplateMonster maintains a full in-house web design facility, with a team of the most talented web designers ever assembled under one roof, all of which are supported by an advanced web design environment and all the tools and product utilities required to deliver the best Web Site Templates in the world. TemplateMonster's Web templates are called "shelf web designs". These templates are designed specifically for e-commerce businesses, webshops, corporate sites, etc. The offering of thousands of highly economical Web templates allows companies to quickly and easily create a high-end, professional Web presence. TemplateMonster sells a high volume of these templates to webmasters and small companies all over the world.

The Challenge

Since its inception as an e-commerce entity TemplateMonster had always had two major problems related to credit card processing.

The first problem related to brand recognition. Although the TemplateMonster brand is recognized worldwide by webmasters and web-designers, since its product offering is strictly B2B, they did not enjoy the same brand recognition with brick and mortar businesses, particularly in the financial and banking communities.

The second problem related to hacking and fraud. Various hackers and other individuals in the Internet underground targeted TemplateMonster, making purchases using bogus and fraudulent credit cards. TemplateMonster products are ideally suited to the credit card frauder because of their need to quickly create a fake Internet presence (i.e. fake webshop). As a result of these fraud actions, TemplateMonster was forced to take extreme measures to protect their transactions, verifying EACH purchase with a telephone call. This protective action is extremely rare with Internet businesses, particularly those with such a high volume of sales and such a small per-transaction charge. By taking this action, TemplateMonster was able to keep their fraud levels very low, however they were still greater than the 1% allowed by the bank.

These two problems, combined made it extremely difficult for TemplateMonster to find an acceptable long-term processing solution. Because most banks they approached were not familiar with the company, they were unwilling to create a direct Merchant relationship with TemplateMonster. Additionally, as the banks did not entirely understand TemplateMonster's business model, they did not know how to verify the legitimacy of the business and the substantial sales volume coming in from them. Furthermore, while VISA and MasterCard require Merchants to maintain chargeback levels of less than 2%, most of the widely known banks, which specialize in Online transactions often require levels under 1%. They are acutely aware that e-commerce sales generally are accompanied by higher chargebacks than in the brick and mortar environment. Allowing its Merchants to exceed 1% chargebacks on very high sales volumes is extremely dangerous, as it can have a dramatic negative effect on the bank's overall fraud levels.

The Solution

When TemplateMonster approached ChronoPay with these processing challenges, we analyzed the situation from every angle, actually uncovering most of the problems described. The Merchant was unable to fully describe the extent of their processing problems, simply admitting that they had "constant problems" with its processors, typically third party billers (aggregators), who often used the situation to their own advantage. ChronoPay's team was able to identify the problems and as a result successfully placed the company with an acquiring bank. The bank we located accepted TemplateMonster's current level of chargebacks, since it was within the set rules and regulations of VISA & MasterCard. Additionally, the bank, which appreciated the sales volume while not feeling any pressure associated with TemplateMonster's fraud level, together with Chronopay were able to achieve a highly professional atmosphere, allowing both the bank and ChronoPay to provide a solid processing solution as well as excellent service to TemplateMonster. Once the processing was launched, we were able to track each chargeback application, which allowed considerably better fraud screening operations, due to post-analysis.

The Advantage

Because of our vast experience and knowledge in the e-commerce market, ChronoPay was able to effectively communicate the details of TemplateMonster's business model to the bank, helping to establish a sufficient trust level between the bank and the Merchant, allowing for a solid, professional business relationship.