Image via CrunchBase
Note to the Tony Bates-if you have customers, bill them as Skype, not an unknown, back office company. It's called Branding 101. You see, it's been a few years since Skype started to charge for services, so one would think that in an era of global transactions that they would get their payment act together, especially since they are now owned by Microsoft, but treated as an off-shore owned entity.
In the past they and many of the leading USA banks have had the same problem I've seen with other off-shore merchants-they fall into the high risk of fraud, so the credit card companies and banks take a careful look at their transactions. Now that Skype accepts the American Express card, a sign that more businesses are using Skype, one has to educte their credit card companies about them. At one point Skype and CapitalOne had issues, then Barclays, all in how they presented their data to to them.
Enter WorldPay, a European processor of credit card transactions. Today, the account security group of American Express flagged some renewals on various Skype accounts we use in my agency. Of course, Skype is who I do business with, but instead of Skype being the "merchant" presented to American Express, the name provided was WorldPay, a company that has only transacted business with me four times in the past few years, and those were for purchases in the UK.
It took a while with the very helpful AMEX rep, Ahmed, who basically said "oh, yes, we often see WorldPay flagged and it ends up being Skype."
