USARK is THE organization which uniquely advocates for our freedom to responsibly keep Reptiles & Amphibians.

At Tinley Park NARBC in February, MorphMarket auctioned off a first of its kind home page advertisement to raise money for our industry. Bob Vu of Bob's Balls donated $6500 because he understands how important USARK is to our hobby and future. For that reason we are featuring his store on our home page for this next month.

Bob is a proud member of USARK. Let his support be an example to all of us! Numbers count. Please become a member today.

For many years, MorphMarket was a side-project run by one guy.

Today, this site is run by a team of individuals who are dedicated to advancing the herpetoculture community. The new services we are building are only possible thanks to your support.

But who are these folks? Please take a moment to meet the team!

Many legitimate reptile breeders accounts have been frozen by PayPal in the last month. This is allegedly due to complaints from PayPal corporate regarding higher than average fraud rates in this sector. We are continuing to monitor this situation.

While we are not discouraging the use of PayPal at this time, if you are a breeder you may want to perform more frequent withdrawals of your balance to a non-linked account in the event that your account becomes frozen.

For MorphMarket subscription payments, we will continue to accept PayPal on our website. If any users need to make payments for annual plans with another method, as in the past you may contact our support team, and we will invoice you with Square. In the next month or two we plan to add alternative subscription payment options onto the site for greater convenience.

While we recognize that PayPal has traditionally offered great buyer protection, other payment methods such as credit cards provide good protection as well. Due to the recent events, some reputable breeders may not be accepting PayPal, but this is not a reason in itself to distrust them. As always we recommend that you do your own research on any seller: read reviews on MorphMarket and consult others that you trust.

At MorphMarket we pride ourselves in offering the best online platform both for buyers and sellers. If you have any concerns about making a payment or suspect someone is not being a responsible seller, please contact our support team.

In the coming months we will be investigating the best payment methods for animal transactions for the reptile community, so stay tuned.

Thanks to Brian Carter, Shawn Gray, and others for their input.

Here at MorphMarket, we’re always striving to make sure all our users, buyers and sellers alike, are honest in their business dealings. We’re also keenly aware that a person’s overall ethics and morals regarding animal husbandry and conservation play a critical role in our community. It is our responsibility to take care of the animals we bring into our homes, as well as respect and care for the natural environment around us. Doing so is not only critical to the animals and the environment, but also in protecting our rights to continue keeping them.

Because this is so important, we’ve composed two articles: a document expressing our position on these issues, and also a code of ethics which we will soon require all our users to agree to. It is on each of us, as individuals and as a community, to work together to protect the animals we love, and our rights to keep them.

We are excited to announce USARK Membership Badges for sellers. These new Store Badges recognize USARK members with 100% authenticity, because our data is synced directly from the USARK database each night.

For our system to recognize your membership, ensure that you have added to your MorphMarket account (under User Settings) the same email address which you used to purchase your USARK membership. This email does not have to be set to your primary, but it does have to be verified.

Membership in the US Association of Reptile Keepers is critical to our industry. USARK fights against powerful lobby groups who want to take away your rights to responsibly keep reptiles and amphibians.

We know that there are people who have quietly supported USARK for many years. This is admirable, but please consider how publicly supporting USARK is even better. These badges are not just about you -- they are about our unity behind USARK. Your display of membership will help raise awareness about the importance of supporting this organization, because others will see that you are supporting. This compounds your contributions.

We also know that many have provided support to USARK in ways other than membership. Please consider that USARK needs not only financial support, but also membership numbers. Numbers reflect the amount of individual support behind USARK in a way that is similar to names on a petition. The groups that we are up against are massive, so we need to make every one of our votes count.

To recognize your contributions, USARK is willing to grant credit for items donated to USARK auctions within the past year towards an annual membership. To apply contact [email protected].

If you do not have a membership and wish to support USARK, please visit usark.org. Bronze memberships are only $40/year.

Badges are updated nightly, so please allow a day for changes to take effect.

In the future, we plan to add User Badges which will include a similar badge to recognize support from Buyers.

MorphMarket is proud to be a Gold Member of the US Association of Reptile Keepers because they advocate for our freedom to responsibly keep Reptiles & Amphibians. Not only does this organization need your financial support, but also your name. Its membership count reflects its significance to outsiders in the same way the count of signatures on a petition reflects its level of support. Let policymakers count you among those who stand with USARK.

To raise awareness about USARK and amplify its voice, MorphMarket will now be syndicating its official alerts to a new category in our community forums and to our home page.

On the home page, these alerts will show up under the Community section with an official USARK badge as shown in the picture, where they will remain for seven days, while the other topics remain only for a few days.

You can learn more about USARK and become a member at their website. There you can also subscribe for email updates or via their RSS feed.