Prepaid Wallet eMoney
Web Commerce Today, Issue 48, July 15, 2001
These programs require funding a wallet or virtual account with money via check, credit card, or funds transfer from a bank. To succeed, such a system must be adopted by both consumers (who install a wallet on their PC or become "members" using a web interface) and merchants (who are willing to take payments via e-cash). Without a critical mass of both consumers and merchants, a wallet system can't succeed. But in certain environments they are catching on.
The US needed a trusting environment between small-time buyers and sellers in auctions and PayPal caught on. In Russia, with fewer credit cards and the need for a prepaid, trusted system, PayCash is catching on. It remains to be seen what other e-cash systems, if any, will become widely adopted.
| Thirt South Africa Africa |
Thirt.comPostnet Suite 457 Private Bag X 9 An online escrow and delivery company providing a "risk free" transacting environment. Allows payment by international credit cards, though merchants must be in S0uth Africa. Merchants may e-commerce enable their sites with the Thirt "Paybutton." Monies are held in trust for 7 days while delivery is made, then paid into the merchant's Thirt account. Escrow or trust fee of 3% or R10 whichever is greater, to both the merchant and the buyer. No setup charges. |
| PayCash.ru Russian Federation Eastern Europe |
Alkor Group of CompaniesSt. Petersburg Russian Federation A prepaid wallet system used in Russia, a mutual project of Tavrichesky Bank and the Alkor Group of Companies (St. Petersburg, Russia). Members can transfer money from their PayCash account to a local bank account of cooperating banks. At present only Russian version of the Ecombank exists. It operates digital Rubles, which can be used for payments in more than a hundred Internet shops in Russia. There are currently seven Russian banks connected with PayCash -- the biggest is Guta (among the top 10 in size). PayCash is also connected to Sberbank, Contact, and Western Union money transfer systems. "In fact," says the director, "we can tranfer money to any bank in Russia, but the commission for non-connected banks is higher." The system appears to be catching on in Russia, that has grown from 15 to 36 e-shop merchants in the year ending March 2001, with 59 show-cases and 8 representative offices in Russia and abroad. Dr. Victor Dostov is project manager. About 3 to 10% of Internet transactions in Russia are through digital money, and about the same through credit cards. The remainder, 80 to 85%, are C.O.D. PayCash in the US is represented by Cyphermint, Inc. http://www.cyphermint.com. The current bottleneck is getting money into the system. |
| Webmoney.ru Russian Federation Eastern Europe |
WebMoney TransferRussian Federation A prepaid wallet system used in Russia, where credit cards are less common. Not to be confused with WebMoney Corp. of Japan. Site is entirely in Russian. |
User Feedback:As I live in Russia so I sending you two Russian payment systems. Both of them are systems of Internet (electronical) money and well known in Russia. I use "Webmoney.ru". It is very very comfortable for people who is spend a lot of time on the computer. I think that it is simply enough in installation, study and use also provides a sufficient level of safety. I can not estimate as far as these systems correspond to the laws, but both firms assert, that they have all necessary sanctions for activity. 1. http://www.webmoney.ru/. (I could not understand if webmoney.COM, and webmoney.RU are the same system but from webmoney.ru all information in English has disappeared :-((. 2. www.PayCash.ru/ It has all information in Enhlish. -- Kisin Mikhail Servocomp Ltd. RU | |
| PayPal United States International |
PayPalP.O. Box 45950 Immensely popular auction payment system now includes a basic shopping cart. No merchant account required. 2.9% plus 30 cent transaction fee for new and low volume merchants ("standard rate"), 2.2% plus 30 cents for established, high volume sellers ("merchant rate"). Takes 3 to 4 days for moneys to be deposited in merchant's account. Merchants in 8 countries can have money moved electronically from their PayPal account to a local bank account, for a small fee (outside the US). Countries with local bank connection include: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Netherlands, New Zealand, UK, and US. However, residents of about 50 countries can be PayPal members. Growing in popularity among online merchants, since it allows payments via credit card without the necessity of setting up a merchant account. See my review: http://www.wilsonweb.com/reviews/paypal.htm |
User Feedback:I have been using PayPal's web accept to accept credit card payments from the US and 22 countries --but the service was limited to one-product single purchases. Last month, PayPal launched a free shopping cart that you copy/paste html onto your web site to work. It works so well, I have just cancelled my merchant credit card account and am saving a ton in fees. I also benefit from the PayPal shops promoting my web site that I mentioned in my email to you about pay-per-click search engines. -- Harry McGrath US | |
| I have been using two payment gateways and they seem to work well and securely. One is PayPal and although it is not a pure gateway it very much acts like one. eBay users like it very much because before using it you have to be "verified". This is a simple step process that you do once and after the verification you are set to pay immediately using either VISA, MC, or electronic transfers from your own bank account. The money is immediately credited to the seller. The system works for anyone who has an e-mail address and is currently implemented for some 10 countries. eBay has its own system called PAYBILL but I have not used it yet. I find it interesting that VISA, MC or AE have not setup their own system. PayPal essentially handles their transactions ( they do not accept American Express). The drawback is that recipients of payments are faced with a double fee PAYPAL's and the Credit card's ). -- Eduardo L. Rodriguez SCORE US | |
| PayPal the best I have found! -- Joe Santisi US | |
| PayPal continues to be an efficient, service oriented, apparently safe option for me. They add services constantly and I can now use them for other parts of my business as well as eBay. I believe that they are started to charge for bigger transactions but I am too small to have to worry about this. They are perfect for a small to medium sized business or for free lancers. -- Carol Dennis US | |
| I read with great interest your article on PayPal precisely because I'm considering REMOVING their service. I sell a digital product, an e-book. As you pointed out, the HTML in PayPal's shopping cart asks you to specify a return URL after the transaction is complete. For me, that return URL is the download page for my e-book. The problem is that the shopping cart fields --- INCLUDING that return URL --- appear in the browser's address bar BEFORE the transaction is complete. Anyone can merely copy the download page URL and get to my ebook without paying at all. I've seen discussions of this in various Internet forums, with most people feeling the risk isn't worth it. -- Diana Ratliff US | |
| We're using PayPal for our vacation rental business. I'm not the system operator, our bookkeeper is, but as far as I know, it's working fine. We got into PayPal during the first few months of its development (it started out as an ebay payment facilitator), and had a personal account with no commercial fees whatsoever. Once they got organized for business, they began charging 1.9% -- but that's a lot less than credit cards cost, and it solves our problem of not being able to offer them. I think I remember there being a problem last year with the maximum ticket PayPal would accept, but that may have changed lately. Our average rental is about $1,000/wk but some go as high as $4500/wk; we take payment in two halves. The vacation rental industry is huge, and very few of those businesses that rent property owned by others are offering payment by credit card, but I believe the demand is increasing among vacationers, or at least that the market could be larger if families could put their vacation on a card. My company is 25 years old, and I've had no trouble getting people to pay by check. We insist on enough leadtime for checks to clear before arrival. I run an "exit survey" and added the card question last year -- quite a few said they'd pay by card if given the opportunity, but nowhere near a majority. We'll see in a few weeks what this year's survey brings. There are other industries that work on commission that could otherwise be using credit cards. There are Big Bucks out there for whoever can solve this problem! -- Margaret Krainin US | |
