Merchant Account and Payment Processors

[domweb]

OK. On the premise that their is no stupid questions...

I have reviewed the paysite payment model often enough to form a picture of how it works. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

To process credit cards for two, you need two things:

1. A merchant account where the issuing merchant bank accepts adult transactions.

2. A payment processor company that will do the legwork of running a web client through name/address/cc process and checking for available funds, debitting the funds, etc.

The adult side issues come in at two levels:

1. Finding a merchant account that will process adult transactions, especially web sites. Adult products always raise eyebrows and adult website memberships burden the staff with a higher ratio of chargebacks and fraud claims.

2. The payment processors who will take on adult transactions are few and far between, charge a high premium, have plenty of fees and there are plenty of strange waves going on there right now (IBill, Verotel).

So...does that make sense? Or am I missing something?