--- Douglas Jackson <djackson(a)e-gold.com> wrote:
About a year ago I proposed on this list that the
Board add e-gold as an
additional alternative payment option. As I recall, the suggestion was
declined, with the comment that e-gold was an "also-ran" payment system.
I would like to encourage another look. e-gold has continued to advance
through 2005, pulling considerably ahead of
moneybookers.com [and for
that matter,
etrade.com and
citi.com] in terms of reach and traffic
rankings per Alexa. At present, e-gold processes 40,000 to 60,000 Spends
(User-to-User transfers) per day, conveying $10 million plus of value.
[see
http://www.e-gold.com/stats.html ]. Unlike Paypal, Moneybookers,
credit cards or any other legacy option, e-gold is truly global and
features fees that are a tiny fraction of any other system. For those of
you whose life beyond Wiki entails online commerce, I also note that
e-gold is unique in that it is absolutely free of chargeback risk with
immediate final settlement, worldwide.
Here is what we need:
1) A service that processes credit cards directly w/o the need to create an account
(PayPal
already does that for most countries; more are being added)
2) One that has world-wide acceptance and tens of millions of accounts (again, PayPal fits
that
bill)
3) Accepts the major currencies of the world using an easy to use interface (PayPal)
4) Accepts a wide range of other currencies (MoneyBookers does that)
5) Has an interface that is available in several different languages (MoneyBookers and a
bit
less-so with PayPal; but they are adding more languages)
6) One that lets us easily track individual donations and present those to the public
(PayPal is
great in that regard; there are also many more other neat PayPal hacks that we could add)
There are dozens, if not hundreds, of other systems we could use. While Im not
completely
satisfied with PayPal (they need to give us a price break; fees in the 4 to 5% range are
closer in
value to point-of-sale taxes than normal transaction fees) or MoneyBookers (not the
easiest
service to use), I do think that the two together fit our current needs. Thus, IMO, there
is no
pressing need to add another payment option at this time.
The ideal system would combine the ease of use and service of PayPal with the
internationalization
of MoneyBookers. So far, it looks like PayPal is moving in the direction of being more
international. Id even like to get rid of MoneyBookers as a payment option once PayPal
becomes as
international as MoneyBookers and they give us a fee break. Keeping things simple has its
own
value.
-- mav
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