Past News Items
Our Financial Institutions,
Are they doing enough to Protect Consumers and Merchants?
01, September 2007
This story began July 9th 2007 with our first online donation. On July 5th 2007 after placing our name on WikiPedia the free online encyclopedia under Poverty/External Links we noticed an immediate increase in traffic to our web site and online donations. We assumed that was because of the link we created on WikiPedia or exactly where the new traffic came from we aren’t sure. The company we were using to process our donations online was LinkPoint, Card Services International; all are part of 1st Data Corporation.
After thirty days of continuous transactions we began to notice that the names, addresses, states, and countries were strange. At first we thought that our donors wanted to remain anonymous to prevent unwanted solicitations. What is confusing to us is how can a company that claims to be secure allow such things as a customers name like this: asdkfjasd adlkfj to get through the verification process. Or how a Credit Card can be used without so much as verifying the address or allowing an option not to put in the Credit Card security code on the back. Donations were made but not by the actual customers themselves. Now we look bad to the donors and anyone that would want to do business with us. It is a loss of goodwill for us and could damage our reputation. Our specific goal is to help the homeless and people living in poverty in South Florida, and the rest of the USA, Brazil, and the world. Our Mission is Global Poverty Minimization. Towards the end of August we began to notice all the chargeback’s as they are called for merchants. But before we could block the IP addresses Link Point decided without giving us any warning they closed our account on August 28th to process our legitimate donations. We have now switched to Pay Pal to process our donations online we believe that they are the best for processing CC payments and the Company least likely to have fraudulent transactions. The sad thing about CC fraud is it affects the consumer and the merchants. Both become victims of this crime. The companies that process CC transactions don’t want to lose any money so they make the merchant pay the price for their (the CC processing companies) own negligence, who then has to pass that cost on to the consumers. The distressing thing is that the company that collects the CC data also charges the merchant to do the transaction and if there is a chargeback they charge the merchant again. So they make money whether it is a legal transaction or not.
Our experience from this is we must now hire someone whose job it is to monitor all CC transactions daily. Another expense that should not be necessary if the CC processing company was as secure as they claim they are. Our non-profit was under the impression that if a CC company whose job it is to make sure all transactions are secure and verified aren’t that at all. I could understand if we had people at a terminal taking phone calls to process CC transactions from the consumer but we had no control over who donates from their own computer using the internet through the CC processing Co’s gateway to process CC transactions. When it gets to the CC gateway for E-commerce at that point it is out of our control and then becomes the CC Company’s responsibility to verify and make sure the transactions are secure.
We are diligently working with our attorney to resolve this issue with the companies that are involved.
We want to make sure that all the customers that were involved understand that we had no control over whom or how their Credit Card information was used. We just trusted that the company that was processing the credit card information was secured and was verifying the information correctly.
AmerinRio signs new contract with Mocidade
1 September, 2007--Rio de Janeiro Ms. Oliveira and Neide Carvalho VP Operations in Brazil sign contract with Paulo Vianna President of one of the most popular Samba Schools in Rio de Janeiro, Mocidade Independente de padre Miguel. The Samba will participate in cultural events in Brazil and the United States to raise the awareness of our Mission of Global Poverty Minimization through Education, Health, Social Services, Citizenship, Socio Economics, and Micro-Financial projects.
Brazil needs a Mobile® Blood Bank 17 July, 2007--Rio de Janeiro Ms Oliveira is currently in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil putting together a program for a mobile lab to collect desperately needed blood for the hospitals throughout Brazil. We need funds to purchase the Mobile® Blood Bank or a company to donate the bus and equipment that we need to begin our project. We would like to see a whole fleet of busses throughout Brazil collecting blood that is so desperately needed here and throughout the rest of the world.
Arrival of the torch in Parati for Pan American Games
International HQ's in Miami!
August 2007
Last year we opened our International headquarters in downtown Miami, Florida. In late November 2007 we also opened a branch office in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Our Vice President of Operations in Brazil Ms Neide Lucia R de Carvalho will oversee all operations throughout Brazil. Her team members will assist her in this major endeavor in Brazil. We are excited about the progress we are making there and have major projects ahead of us.
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Last modified: April 01, 2011
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