Credit card processing was a significant barrier to entry for small brands wanting to get started online in the early 2000s. In turn, it was a barrier to our growth as an e-commerce fulfillment provider in the small business space. Paypal was just getting started, Stripe wouldn’t be around for a while yet, and the established, institutional merchant banks was still trying to figure out which boxes to check on their forms for this new domain of online transactions. When we would create a new merchant bank account for a Yahoo Store, we would receive a package in the mail with an embossed metal plate with our account info – to be used in one of those carbon-copy credit card imprinter swipe-accross-and-back machines. Also in the package would be the carbon copy sheets for said machine and some MasterCard/Visa/Amex decals for us to post on our windows – that is, the glass windows near the front door of our office.

So one of the services we offered was a shared-Yahoo Store across the clients who needed to use our merchant services. Bob’s Honky Tonk was still hosted at bobshonkytonk.com, for example, but if you went to the store section, and clicked on a product, at that point you’d see the product page for the product that was for sale on the shared Amplifier Yahoo Store. Add it to your cart, and you’re in Amplifier’s Yahoo Store cart. Check out, and Amplifier’s merchant bank account would process the payment.

For our merchant services clients (I don’t remember what the real name for this service was), we would settle monthly, sending these clients a statement and a check for their Yahoo Store revenue, less our fees. In this case, too, we would use Crystal Reports sitting on top of a MySQL database that I was running locally. I’d export sales from Yahoo Store and import them into MySQL as the basis for the statements.