I hear there was a lot of buzz at Affiliate Summit due to all the problems the CPA rebill part of the industry has been having recently. Some CPA networks have had to pull a lot of offers and some are having a hard time even paying affiliates, due to merchant accounts being pulled for advertisers that do rebill offers.

I blogged about part of the problem recently: Major Shakeup in the CPA Rebill Space Involving Wells Fargo, but much more has happened since then including issues with MasterCard, Visa and increased scrutiny by the FTC.

I wanted to share several recent articles that outline the problems and provide guidelines and solutions. The most obvious solution is for advertisers and networks that do rebill/continuity offers to get compliant with disclosures, billing practices and cancellation request support. This whole mess is hurting our industry image and makes affiliate marketing look shady, so I hope the current issues force a clean up that should have happened long ago.

If you are an affiliate that promotes any kind of rebill (free trial offer) you need to be aware of the different sets of guidelines below, so you can evaluate offers to be sure they are compliant. If they aren’t you could get caught in the middle, either by getting in trouble with the FTC or by having the offer cut off with the advertiser being unable to pay commissions.

MediaTrust has a great post that outlines what advertisers and networks need to do to get compliant with Mastercard guidelines so they can get their merchant accounts re-instated.NOTE: You can download the revised “Direct Marketing Best Practices” HERE.

Update on Direct Marketing Merchant Account Suspensions

As you have already heard… last week MasterCard suspended all direct marketing merchant accounts…

Bear in mind, the sky is NOT falling! This is a an effort by MasterCard to clean up some of the “negative option” marketing that exists out on the web today. Most of the quality programs will be updated and reactivated. These changes will be ultimately improve the quality of the campaigns out on the web and improve the consumer experience.

Today Scott Rewick over at Digital Moses wrote a great piece.

The problem with online continuity

In the quest to drive volume, Marketers start competing with each other first and foremost on price (paid to affiliates). Affiliates can be a rather ruthless bunch, switching from offer to offer solely on what they get paid (and they should). Marketers who want volume will continue to move the price up to grab the volume.

What I am saying though, is that without everyone agreeing to some basic guidelines (I know, great luck in that happening), we will continually be at the mercy of regulatory bodies like the FTC and Attorney Generals, and possibly worst of all, Visa and Mastercard.

Yesterday Barman over at PPC.bz just posted another set of rebill guidelines that came from a health related affiliate network. These have some good practical advice too. Download these Guidelines here.

Guidelines for Negative Option

Don’t get it twisted – these are not laws from the government. They are simply new guidelines that the industry can choose to follow. If everyone is talking about “cleaning up our act,” this 6 page sheet is a good starting point…

The gravy train has passed. Everyone pushed it too far and the industry got a slap on the wrist from the gub-ment

Yet another set of rebill guidelines were shared online yesterday by Bill McIntosh. He got these guidelines from one of his payment processors.

Online Direct Marketing & The New Visa MasterCard Merchant Account Rules

Visa, Mastercard & the FTC are all making some big changes and these new rules have the possibility to hurt your business if you don’t understand them.

…I wanted to share an email I just got from one of my processors. It sheds some light on what the upcoming changes will be. Keep in mind that the official rules have not been adopted and released yet… so it could change. That being said, here’s some light reading for you:

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