UpClick's customers are using its platform to eliminate all processing fees while increasing revenue through the company's unique cross-selling platform. The company also today announced early adoption of its platform by more than a dozen software publishers, including Avanquest Software, Sunbelt Software and Ashampoo.

Payment processing has become a burden for online merchants who typically pay seven to ten per cent, and sometimes as much as 15 per cent of each transaction in various fees. As a result of the high costs, credit cards have become an unpopular form of payment among all merchants, who paid an estimated $48 Billion in fees last year according to the National Retail Federation.

"Online shoppers expect to be able to pay for their goods with credit cards-it's an extremely basic 'must have' for merchants. However, the high costs put online merchants such as software companies in a difficult position - by conservative estimates, they are essentially writing off a tenth of their revenues," said Daniel Assouline, UpClick's CEO and co-founder. "Alternative payment options such as PayPal, Google Checkout and Amazon Payments have emerged with attractive promotions, but they provide only a subset of services that software merchants need and have failed to permanently address the costly strain on a merchant's bottom line."

UpClick's offering eliminates processing fees, while also driving additional revenue to a software company's bottom line by offering complementary, non-competitive offers at the point of checkout. Merchants choose the offers that are displayed on their checkout pages from products they own or from those of other merchants in the network. Processing fees are eliminated for all merchants, whether or not their customers accept the offers, and the aggregate sales across the UpClick affiliate network fund the free transactions.

Companies that use UpClick to process payments are also eligible-but not required-to cross-sell their products via the platform, and when a shopper chooses to accept an offer that is presented to them at checkout, subsequent revenues are shared between all parties involved.

Some of the software industry's leading vendors including Avanquest Corporation have already started to utilize UpClick's solutions.

"We're excited about the opportunity to work with UpClick," said Phil Schnyder, Director of Online Business Development at Avanquest Software. "We chose UpClick because the platform delivers immediate ROI with no upfront costs. UpClick's model is fully performance-based, meaning that their interests are fully aligned with ours. With our diverse product portfolio, we are highly interested in strengthening our cross-selling capabilities."

Beyond Avanquest, early adopters of UpClick's platform include Sunbelt Software, Ashampoo and Uniblue, which all leverage its free processing and cross-sell capabilities. UpClick's platform and affiliate network are available to any company selling downloadable software, e-books, or online subscriptions.

"Credit card processing fees are a common point of friction between merchants and card issuers," said Aaron McPherson, Practice Director, Financial Services for Financial Insights, an IDC Company. "UpClick's strategy of using an affiliate marketing network to defray these costs suggests a solution to the conflict that preserves profitability for card issuers while increasing profitability for merchants."