As you may be aware of, Epassporte is having trouble with VISA, although some sources says the problem is Epassporte’s bank SKNANB (Saint Kitts, Nevis and Anguilla National Bank Limited) which means every Epassporte cardholder is having trouble. On September 4th 2010, Chris Mallick (Epassporte CEO) sent this message, which was also posted in Epassporte site as a splash page, although now it seems to have been taken off:

From:	Christopher Mallick, Owner, ePas
To:	xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Received:	Sep 4, 2010 11:00 PM PDT
Subject:	Important – ePassporte Visa Electron/Virtual Card Suspended
	Dear ePassporte Account Holders, Please be advised that, at 12:00 PM PDT today, September 2, 2010, we were notified that effective immediately, Visa International has suspended our banking partner’s (St. Kitts Nevis Anguilla National Bank) ePassporte Visa program. The ePassporte e-Wallet program continues to be up and running, except funds cannot be transferred between your Visa Account and your e-Wallet. At this time ePassporte can no longer issue Visa Cards, and the ability for our Account Holders to make point of sale purchases and withdraw funds from ATMs has also been suspended. At this time we do not know why this drastic action was taken by Visa. To us, it is unconscionable that such action would be taken without the opportunity for ePassporte to fully understand Visa’s reasons and to be able to take all steps necessary to keep our program running the way it has so successfully done for over 7 years. But that is what Visa has done. As soon as we have more information we will be in contact with you. In the meantime please be assured that your funds are safe. We are very sorry for the short notice and apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. The ePassporte team is working diligently to rectify this situation. We kindly ask you to bear with us while we work through this issue. Please feel free to contact us via the message center or at our call center, should you have any questions, comments or concerns. Thank You, Christopher Mallick

These are very bad news and many people is awaiting for news on the subject, which are supposed to come on Wednesday September 8th. Therefore, we’re no longer accepting Epassporte at least until the situation is clear.

In the meanwhile, if you’re looking for an extremely reliable alternative payment method, please check out this one. (yeah, I know this is spammy but believe me, you won’t regret it )

UPDATE: As of today, Epassporte seems to be gone for good, they posted the following message in their website:

IMPORTANT MESSAGE REGARDING YOUR EPASSPORTE ACCOUNT

Dear ePassporte Account Holders,

St. Kitts Nevis Anguilla National Bank, without our prior knowledge, has turned off the ability for ePassporte to access or display Account Holders’ Visa Card balances. This means that when you login to your ePassporte Account, you will only be able to see your Wallet balance. As a consequence, inquiries regarding your Visa Card balance must be directed to St. Kitts Nevis Anguilla National Bank. St Kitts Bank is responsible for all funds on Visa Cards. Their contact information is as follows:

St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla National Bank Ltd.

Central Street,
P.O. Box 343
Basseterre, St. Kitts, West Indies

Tel: (869) 465-2204    Mon – Thurs: 8 a.m. – 2 p.m. Fri: 8 a.m. – 4 p.m.
Fax: (869) 465-1050
Email: webmaster@sknanb.com

ePassporte will continue to provide support with regard to the funds in your Wallet. We kindly ask for your patience as we must verify Accounts and balances manually.

Thank You,

ePassporte Account Holder Services

so well, I think we can call it THE END

Every now and then we were asked about adding membership options to designs, especially to handle credit cards and Paypal. Therefore, since we tried several membership scripts for WordPress, here’s some insight and honest opinions on some scripts and plugins to handle memberships.

WP E-commerce

This plugin is simply amazing. And free. It does most of what other paid plugins do, only that better and for free. Now, be aware I said MOST, not EVERYTHING. The only con we could find is that it’s not very good for membership sites, but it’s aimed to goods and/or services. It will require a paid module (only $25) but really not as good as the rest of the plugin. All in all, I love my WP E-commerce!

Rating: 9/10

Quick Shop

I think it was the first decent WP membership plugin, so hats off to that. Other than that, there are way better options, and add to that documentation is close to none… just forget it.

Rating:3/10

Amember

It promises too much, but once you check what they deliver, you’ll realize you got the same any Credit Card processor would give you… for free. Documentation is OK, they install it for you (tricky, tricky), but too expensive to get nothing. Yes, I said NOTHING. If you want to use it with WordPress, you’ll have to pay even more, and the WordPress module is probably the poorest of all plugins commented in this post.

Rating: 3/10

WP-Members

Pretty cheap, reliable and extremely easy to use plugin. However, not useful for adult sites since it only uses Paypal. But if you’re going to use it for a mainstream site or you need to charge via Paypal, look no further, it really does the work, and it does it very well. One con: the programmers of this script don’t care at all about look and they get to the extreme of using 4 (four) style sheets for the registration/login page, so you may need to do some work (such as editing php and/or using a lot of !important calls in your style sheet to make sure you override WP defaults)

Rating: 7/10

Magic Members

Although it needs some work and polish, it’s my favorite. Not as easy and intuitive as WP-Members but still easy, more complete AND you can use many payment options, including Paypal and different credit cards processors. Plus, if your credit card processing company isn’t listed, you can request them to add it.

NOTE: As of August 28th, Magic Members has announced the addition of 4 new payment gateways

We wanted to send you a quick note about the new features of the Magic Member plugin.
We integrated Magic Members with new payment gateways:

CCBill
2CheckOut
PayPal Pro
Manuel Pay (Wire Transfer/eCheck)

Rating: 8.5/10

In recap, when it comes to WordPress Membership plugins, there are no many options, and if it’s to sell access to sites, I’d basically use the last 2 I mentioned until something better comes out, and if it is to sell goods, services or to install on E-shop CMS, Wp E-commerce is the answer.

The above being said, all plugins still need some work, whether on its visual aspects or back end. Besides, there’s not a single plugin useful for everything and covering adult and mainstream. It simply doesn’t exist, so it’s time to do it… any developer on to the task?