Security fears led to unpopular change at ABE

Consumer fears of identity theft and credit-card security prompted Abe.com to force its member booksellers to use ABE as their sole card processor, a company official says.

"There's a big security hole in our credit-card processing the moment we forward the credit card numbers to booksellers," particularly those who may have only recently joined ABE, said Boris Wertz, the company's chief operating officer.

Many ABE members are longtime sellers who also operate brick-and-mortar bookstores. Some ABE sellers have been upset since April, when ABE forced them to begin using its own card processing at 5.5 percent, while some of the sellers had been paying less than 2 percent through their own accounts.

About 40 percent of ABE members were using their own merchant accounts before ABE changed its policy, Wertz said in an interview with Canadian radio host Nigel Beale. You can listen to the entire interview here.

Some ABE members have been so angry that they've criticized the company in e-mails sent to book buyers.

But the security concerns, and a strategy to standardize the customer's buying experience, prompted the recent changes, Wertz said.

"We have a lot of heavy book buyers that buy multiple books on our site -- they buy three, four, five books from different booksellers," Wertz said. This could result in several different bookseller names appearing on the buyer's monthly card statement, and lead to confusion, he added.

"They might even forget about the bookseller's name, but they remember ABEbooks.com as the place where they bought their books," Wertz said.