|
|
|
|
Jim Rickman researches, writes, prints, and organises the operation that dispatches the books. He also maintains his own website. PayPal, PayMate, and CCNow are all respected global retailers, certified to accept credit card payments. One of these, depending on the currency, will handle the money. They immediately pass on orders electrically to the people at Jim's end for dispatch, and eventually pay Jim. Each of these online retailers maintains its own website, entirely separate from Jim's site. These are secure websites, on special secure servers, which take credit card details and order instructions. During the process of ordering, internet customers are switched back and forth between servers and websites. (This is indicated by the change in URL and security symbol displayed by the browser.) This system ensures that credit card details are never made available to anyone other than the online retailer. For this reason, any repayment to a customer's credit card normally comes from the online retailer (who received the original payment and thus know the credit card details) rather than from Jim Rickman (who doesn't). Unless they are converting between currencies (which is unnecessary, unless your credit card operates in a currency not listed)) PayMate and CCNow make no charge at all to the internet customer. PayPal, however, charge first-time users of their credit card service two small charges of less than two pounds in total in addition to the price Jim receives for the book. From the customer's point of view, this is more than compensated for by Jim charging nothing for postage. It also allows customers to carry on using their PayPal accounts for other internet transactions, eBay purchases, and so on. |
