Quote:
Originally posted by RonC
We have been asked over and over to explain why we think Glo-bill will not be able to avoid the new regulations by moving offshore, and will Visa shut them down.
First off let me say I have only positive things to say about Glo-bill. I have never heard anything negative. I do not think that they have any bad intentions, just mis-information
To understand Visa you must first forget your common sense, and sense of fair play. The best way to understand them is to think of it this way. It is their bat, their ball, their field, and most important
their umpire, and did I forget to say they get to changes the rules during the middle of the game.
This is how the scenario will play out. Glo-bill is most likely going to try to say they are just the merchant, and they just pay a referral fee to webmasters for sending transactions.
lets say for simple math that 100 customers leave CCbill, Ibill and Epoch to go over to Glo-bill thinking the grass is greener on that side. They will pay the $750 to the current processor since
the recurring transactions are worth more than $750 per year and do not want to loose that income. CCbill, Ibill, or Paycom report that customers name and urls as a U.S. webmaster and are able to process it with no problem.
The end of the first month comes and Glo-bills new bank (lets say in Germany) gets a notice from Visa. The notice will say that they are currently in violation of section XXX. of their Visa operating agreement and
are introducing non coded High Risk IPSP transaction into the Visa system. You currently have 100 Sponsored merchants that are in violation of the cross boarder rules. The fine for this is $25,000 per Webmaster
or $2.5 million fine. (Guess webmaster are not getting checks this week) The bank will say wait a minute, we are not going to pay this, they will due what all banks do, they will pass this down to the merchant (Glo-bill). Visa will also let the bank know that they are in violation of their Master Merchant agreement with Visa and if the continue to send transaction into the Visa network they could loose their right to process Visa at that bank and or more possible future fines.. The risk people at the are going to say wait we have a merchant that could cause us to Loose our ability to process Visa, and we probably do not have reserves great enough at this point to cover future fines? What do we
do? The bank notifies Glo-bill they can only send transaction from webmasters in Germany or they will close their account.
Remember this is their bat, their ball, and their field, and their rules.
Now of course Glo-bill is going to try and appeal these fines, This is where the part about their umpire comes in. The answer from Visa is going to be to bad you broke the rules. Glo-bill will then be left with going to court, now in a forgein country, trying to convince a Judge that they should over rule Visas rules for a porn company that is trying to bypass their rules. Sure this will happen
For the people that claim this is only spin. Do you really think that all three of the largest billing companies did not have a larger army of lawyers work with Visa to find a way around these rules and only Glo-bill was able to find the path.
At the end of the day, it may have been just as simple as Visa will pick up the phone, call this new bank that Glo-bill just started a relationship with and say "We would like for you to discontinue doing this" End of conversation, since banks treat a call from Visa like the IRS. YES, Sir, Thank You Sir, We will do that Now Sir.
The reality is lots of new little companies will pop up, making all kinds of claims, Visa will handle them just like they do Bestiality, Lolita, etc.. They will close one down, and another will pop up. The webmaster that is promoting some content that is not except like Bestiality may not care that they lost their rebills, and call that a cost of business. The legit webmaster on the other hand may get thrown out with the rest and loose 60% of their money from their rebills
My Guess is that Glo-bill after talking to their banks further will realize that they were just mis-informed
Ron C
CEO, CCBILL.com
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Ron,
Thank you very much for your opinion on our corporate strategy. You have spun an interesting projection based on your understanding of the new rules and based on your experience running one of the best third-party billing companies on the internet (no sarcasm, I mean that, btw). But there are some incorrect assumptions in your post that I would like to point out. Most importantly, I can assure that Glo-Bill is NOT misinformed about anything.
Without giving away the full game-plan on our strategy, I will say that it revolves around more than a simple jurisdictional issue. It were simply jurisdictional then, as you pointed out earlier, all third-party billers would have simply moved to some other country. We did our homework for months and implemented what we feel is the best all-round solution. Under the CURRENT rules, Glo-Bill forsees no problem with its current business model and it is business as usual for us. We are not employing a "run, hide and stall" strategy as your description seems to imply. We have openly discussed changes to our business model and jurisdictional issues with both the banks and credit card companies over the course of months. We have across-the-board approval for our way of doing business under the current regime. If the credit card companies decide to ammend their rules at some future time or implement a whole new set of regulations, then the only thing we can promise is that we will be on top of it, as we were this time, and try to once again come up with the best solution for our clients.
I will reiterate what I stated in previous posts:
We will not divulge the full details on our strategies for obvious reasons. We will say that we saw the writiing on the wall many months ago and started taking proactive measures since then to protect our clients' businesses to the best of our ability. The bottom line: it is business as usual at Glo-Bill, meaning:
- No set-up fees
- No monthly or annual fees
- No reporting of your private information to any outside entity
- Websites from foreign countries welcome as always without special requirements
- No Big Brother style registration forms and no scrutiny of your website by other entities
- We help you maintain your chargebacks at very low levels WITHOUT blindly declining good signups
- Still no free trials and proud of it!
Again, Ron, I would like to thank you for your post and your opinion of Glo-Bill. I think that in this time of change for the industry that certain companies are standing out for the way they are attempting to keep webmasters informed. Your presence on this board is certainly appreciated by many, including myself, and I think that speaks for itself. I know that CCBill is here to stay and is an anchor for the industry. And, if I may be so presumptuous to state, so is Glo-Bill.