recommendations - payment processors for warez sites

[HumbleGuy]

My friend has been a data hoarder for years, and they've decided to monetize the frankly astounding amount of content they've collected in certain niches. It sounds like they have the leads and the distribution network to contact/service them, but they want to be able to accept credit cards instead of just crypto for payment. I've tried reviewing every thread on here regarding other businesses with trademark issues (iptv, replicas) and from what I can tell, there are two ways of going about it:
1) using darks to buy aged shelf companies, create bank accounts, emi accounts, and many, many merchant accounts, as well as setting up a front-store and finding someone with the technical skills to make any transactions on the real store appear to come from the front-store as far as the merchant accounts are concerned, and then burning through those merchant accounts as they catch on, losing plenty of $ in the process;
2) find a payment processor you can be honest with and helps that sort of business operate (as long as you actually provide a service people are happy to pay for and don't have crazy chargeback rates).
I've noticed several people mention there are payment processors like that around, but you need to be put in contact with them, so I'm hoping someone can PM me about that, or if that isn't an option, to maybe point me in the direction of someone who can setup the technical aspects I mentioned?

 

[uplana]

In the past @neweraoffshore was one of the guys with the skills to help people in the same situation as you. If he don't shim in here you may try to PM him!

There was another fellow able to help with such stuff, but I don't remember his name right now, will edit this post if I remember.

Other than this, as you already read and figured out, it is very complicated to find something that works for your niche. On top of this, beware of scams, here are lots that exploits people in your situation.

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[duraco]

There's a couple of mechants who specialize in that kinda of businesss (iptv, filelockers..), but their rates are HIGH. One (authorize) harges 25-35% fee, the other one (byteseller) charges about 15-20%. The upside is you don't have to submit any (real) docs, you can be completely anonymous. They have strict securitymeasures, so many purchases are declined even though they're real..

 

[bonox]

do you have links to the processors website please?

 

[duraco]

authorize.se
byteseller.org

 

[bonox]

Not bad, no negative reviews to find anywhere on Google about the payment processors! but 25- 30% ouch !!!!

They must be under cover and have found a way to mix the transactions as discussed here a few times. Anyway, if this is the last resource on earth for such stuff, I say go for it.

 

[HumbleGuy]

Thank you @uplana and @duraco for your responses!
I did have a followup question about authorize.se. I went to that page, but the only option was to submit a claim - nowhere to sign up with them as a service or to get more info; do you know how one would go about that? I think they'll try byteseller and see how that goes, but it's always good to have a backup. As for neweraoffshore, he sounds really busy, so I may reach out to him depending on how it goes with the payment processors duraco mentioned. From other posts on here, it sounds like he has the technical skills to do the whole front-shop transaction redirection, which would still require all the other business/account setups to move forward with that. I'll keep that on the backburner, especially if the warez sites turn into long-term businesses and they end up wanting to cut down the on-going costs.
Again, thank you both for your quick responses to my question. I really appreciate it.

 

[duraco]

@HumbleGuy
authorize stays under the radar so they don't have any real website, but you can contact them at [email protected]. If you're lucky they might evenm reply you.
I haven't used any of the sites for 5-6 years, but you should only use them as a secondary gateway, not as sole processor. Many are reporting sales declining when only using them, cause they have so strict securitymeasures so many real purchases are declined and won't be processed. Byteseller is a bit better than authorize though, and have a bit lower fees.

 

[AMD]

That's a nice information, nice links. Do you know where these processors are located, country?

I assume Russia or Latvia?

 

[CaptK]

Eventhough the websites is basic I have a few IPTV clients who have used byteseller and nexus something ( I will have to check).
There is also a Chinese PSP I will find out the name who are supposed to be good. Onboarding is pretty easy I was told and fee is about 20%.

Last edited: Feb 13, 2022

 

[duraco]

AMD said:
That's a nice information, nice links. Do you know where these processors are located, country?

I assume Russia or Latvia?
Click to expand...

Byteseller is registered in ritish Virgin Island. Authorize i'm not sure (allthough he/they are russian citizen).

 

[galaxy720]

CaptK said:
Eventhough the websites is basic I have a few IPTV clients who have used byteseller and nexus something ( I will have to check).
There is also a Chinese PSP I will find out the name who are supposed to be good. Onboarding is pretty easy I was told and fee is about 20%.
Click to expand...

Byteseller takes 36% fee now. That's really very high.
Could you give the website's addresses of nexus and the Chinese PSP.

 

[CaptK]

galaxy720 said:
Byteseller takes 36% fee now. That's really very high.
Could you give the website's addresses of nexus and the Chinese PSP.
Click to expand...

I'm looking for them it was a couple years ago. Bare with me.

 

[HumbleGuy]

@CaptK I'm also very interested in those other providers if you manage to remember what they were or have any old notes on them. I tried looking up payment processors with Nexus in the name, and that was... not productive, lol.

First pass at ByteSeller was unsuccessful, so they're rebuilding a new site to be more of a generic forum for information on where to download stuff as opposed to being totally upfront about providing the means to easily download hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of trademarked content. Just in case the 2nd pass doesn't work either, I'd love to have other providers to reach out to, so if anything else comes to mind, please don't hesitate to drop a note here.

 

[CaptK]

It looks like its on another server, I do wipe them every 6 months, but sometimes i keep a log of the websites for future reference.
Bare with me I'm really busy at the moment but will definitely find it.

 

[HumbleGuy]

They've reached out to both authorize.se and byteseller.org. No response at all from authorize, and after a few days, byteseller responded to a single, very specific question [from a new email address] with their template questionaire. My friend responded back with the answers, also highlighting that we're mostly curious about their compliance policies to see what further changes would need to be made, if any, in order to make this a good fit. Still waiting to hear back from them.

Now that the new plan is to create a paid forum in which users can post links to various content (with links to the terabytes of educational material locked away in a VIP section), it makes me wonder if there are any other PSP's open to supporting private forums that allow people to talk about warez hosted elsewhere on the internet, since no illegal content/files would be hosted on the site, itself. I've started looking, myself, but I don't think I'm using the right search terms to find the sort of PSP's I'm trying to find. It feels like my best chance of finding them is to ask for referrals from people with more experience in this sort of world.

Are there any other merchant account providers known for allowing withdrawals in bitcoin or other crypto? From what my friend is saying, they don't mind high fees as long as they can simply get things going as fast as possible in order to prove the business model works. Once it starts bringing in revenue, they can use that to setup everything on the backend in a more professional manner and improve the profit margins. Right now, their main focus is on keeping everything as anonymous as possible (hence the crypto withdrawals) without sinking in too much more time and funds just to prove the idea.

 

[lory]

CaptK said:
It looks like its on another server, I do wipe them every 6 months, but sometimes i keep a log of the websites for future reference.
Bare with me I'm really busy at the moment but will definitely find it.
Click to expand...

still busy... wonder if you can help ??

HumbleGuy said:
wonder if there are any other PSP's open to supporting private forums that allow people to talk about warez hosted elsewhere on the internet
Click to expand...

it is still illegal what is going on there... if they can get a legal opinion from a lawyer, the doors are all open with most processors, I doubt they will be able to get that!

 

[CaptK]

lory said:
still busy... wonder if you can help ??
Click to expand...

Yes!! I am in Dubai currently and have had to extend due to the amount of Russian and Ukrainian clients.
There are a lot more other European nationalities coming in also.

 

[HumbleGuy]

quick update:

Whomever ByteSeller has in charge of their email is... how do I say this... not great at their job. After trying for a week to learn more about their compliance policies, so that I could build the forum website in a way that would comply with any/all of their rules, he just kept parroting that they'd be open to working with us but wouldn't know for sure until I went ahead and built a site that he could send off to his Compliance Department. So, I spent another week putting together a content-based website, sort of like a forum, and started filling it with enough [completely legal] content that one might consider paying to gain access to. I sent him login credentials for their compliance department to use to check everything out, and made it clear that I'd be happy to make changes to adhere to any compliance requirements that I hadn't been made aware of beforehand. Several days later, I hear back that their acquirers declined to accept the website. I immediately asked why, repeating that I was happy to make any required changes in order to move forward. Several days after that, he responded that they only deal with file and video sharing hosting websites, and forums are outside their field of operations... in direct contradiction to what he told me in the very beginning.

I've thought about it, and I can't think of a file or video sharing hosting website (that I have the means to put together) which would make sense for the size of transactions appropriate for getting access to the massive hoard of content people would be getting access to. It would be priced at a minimum of a couple hundred dollars, but I've never seen a file hosting site charge more than $30 a month. That would mean making all transactions come through as annual subscriptions, and I can't imagine that not sending up all kinds of red flags on the backend of the PSP and getting the account quickly shutdown. I thought of signing up for an IPTV whitelabel service and becoming a reseller, providing access links to the additional content through private messages to each subscriber, but ran into the same concerns about the average transaction amount.

@CaptK I know you've been busy for the past month, ever since you mentioned knowing of a couple more PSP's which might support the anonymity requirements of this project. If you find the time to pass along their info, I'd appreciate it. As far as I know, everything for this project is in place except for a way to accept credit card payments.

If anyone else can think of any payment service providers which might allow anonymous payouts, meaning any kind of cryptocurrency, so that we could accept credit cards without having to provide a bunch of KYC documentation and banking info, please feel free to chime in or send me a PM!

The frustrating thing is that I can see the project working really well if we went the traditional route described in the Mentor Group Gold section, setting up a corporate and financial profile with darks in order to get access to high risk merchant accounts, and then running the content-based website as the main business, with the data hoard accessible within a hidden VIP section. But the upfront funds aren't available to get all that setup; they'd only become available as a result of the sales of it.

 

[burden]

duraco said:
authorize.se
byteseller.org
Click to expand...

they are some good suggestions, but will they fool you once your account is loaded with money?