Image via WikipediaAccording to a post on Web of Trust (WOT), Solid Trust Pay, one of the processors used by TVI Express, is actually a packaged script offered by PlxWebDev / PayArkI compared the "user agreement" and they are virtually identical. Here are the comparisons
From the "demo" site on plxwebdev
And from the SolidTrustPay.com website...
Buyer Beware - ePAY Online assumes absolutely no responsibility for any purchases made through the ePAY Online system. At any time you join any Income Opportunity or MLM program, or Matrix Website or purchase a product or service you are doing so at your own risk and that by signing up and joining ePAY Online you do hearby agree in FULL that you release ePAY Online and all its affiliates and officers, employees, members and owners from ANY loss you may incur either by using this service...
Buyer Beware - SolidTrust Pay assumes absolutely no responsibility for any purchases made or received through the system. At any time you join, or offer, any Income Opportunity or MLM program, or Matrix Website, purchase or offer a product or service, you are doing so at your own risk and that by signing up and joining you do hearby agree in FULL that you release SolidTrust Pay and all its affiliates and officers, employees, members and owners from ANY loss you may incur either by using this service ...Even the misspelled "hearby" is there, still misspelled. (It should be "hereby")
Conclusion: SolidTrust Pay is not any more trustworthy than your average PHP website. It has no reputation, nor even a real support team behind it. In fact, does it even have a banking license to hold people's money? Guess that's why STP is based in CANADA instead of the US. However, is that even legal? A "real" payment processor such as VersaPay is partnered with Chase Bank and is certified with Visa/Mastercard. STP displays Visa/Mastercard logo, but it's not linked, and apparently has no actual relationship with any real bank or VISA and Mastercard.
Before you ask, Yes, Paypal *does* have a Banking License in Europe, and is licensed for banking in 28 of the 50 states in the US, and the other states either don't need one or is satisfied with out-of-state banking license.
Even TVI Express' payment processor is shady...
UPDATE 15-JAN-2011 -- unconfirmed comment stated that "Solid Trust Pay" has disassociated with TVI Express since April 2009, and the script was indeed "founded" on plxWebDev scripts. You can see the actual comments below.
UPDATE 01-FEB-2011 -- authenticity of comment was confirmed by STP Support. See 01-FEB-2011 blog entry.
6 comments:
SolidTrust Pay would like to comment on your post. Firstly, we stopped providing any processing services to TVI as of April, 2009. The reasons for this included extensive credit card fraud and lack of cooperation from them in providing corporation and identity documents for the company owners. SolidTrust has in no way any connection to TVI at this time and will not at any time in the future.
You are right in that we purchased our original script (in 2006) from an excellent programmer, plxwebdev. And yes, the terms and agreements, which did not, and still do not, need any real altering, are almost the same. (Thank you for catching that typo on hearby - we will definitely change that). Since 2006, obviously, our website has undergone extreme customization and our entire script has been redesigned, reformatted and rewritten. Barely anything beyond a few text passages is the same as the original script we purchased.
Payment Processors such as SolidTrust Pay are not banks and therefore do not require banking licenses; they ARE required to be regulated by governmental anti-money laundering policies, which we are. We have an FSA license in the UK and are regulated by FinTRAC here in Canada. If we were located in the United States, then we would be required to have a money services license in all the states that require one. That is why PayPal has licenses in those states - they are located on US soil. (Be careful not to confuse a banking license with a money services license.) We have strong banking associations with multiple banks around the globe. Our credit card processing gateways are affiliated with partners in Australia, Eastern Europe, Europe, the United States and Asia. There is no need to link the VISA/MasterCard logos on our website to anything; they are required to be there to show that we offer card processing to merchants and members. Unless you are a bank, or owned by a bank, a processor does not have a "membership" with VISA or MasterCard directly.
STPay has tens of thousands of members, a great reputation, is entering its 5th year of providing online processing services and, we can assure you, is much more than a simple PHP website. Our customer support dept. offers phone, livechat and ticket assistance 24/7. Customers can call from anywhere in the world and speak to a live person.
STPay has been nominated one of the top 5 payment processors for 2010 (processors serving small to medium businesses). You are welcome to view the voting at: http://www.ecommerce-journal.com
We hope this gives you more direct information on SolidTrust Pay and relieves any concern you may have.
Thank you for the comment. It will be cited in an update to the entry itself ASAP.
Don't you mean April 2010? AFAIK TVI Express didn't name STP as a payment processor until December 2009.
We greatly apologize for the date typo. SolidTrust started providing processing services to TVI in late November of 2009 and ceased providing services in April, 2010.
Your outlook on regulations is either misguided or else is intentionally misrepresenting the truth of the law. E-Wallets and other payment service providers are required to be licensed as a financial services entity. I can find no such licensing attached to your business name. A separate license is also required for performing monetary exchange services, which is a separate unlicensed business that STP is involved with.
I also hope that when you say your site has had several programming restrictions, that what you actually mean is that you completely discarded the plx script and started from scratch. Please tell me this is the case.
Plx is just selling the same old solarpay script that has been around the net forever. It started out as dopays, which wasn't bad except that it wasn't professionally done and had some errors. When SolarPay got ahold of it, the only thing they did was to put in some back doors. From there it was passed around the hacker universe and who knows what got added into it by the time plx put their name on top. If anyone is using this script for real money transactions, they slapped silly.
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