How many epass like companies will shut down in 2011 ?

[will76]

How many of these other companies that operate like epass will run into similar problems and shut down in the not too far future and there will be 1000's of pissed off people shocked that it happened ?

I know some people legitimately can't accept checks and wires are too expensive, but how many people using these methods are doing it to try to avoid taxes, money laundering? You people get burned, you jumping over each other to try to jump back into the fire.

[NickB.]

bump id like to see some opinions/thoughts on this

[baddog]

Not as many as will start up . . . or try.

[will76]

how many will "start up" and just be a scam? people are so eager to find the next epass that I could probably throw up a webpage, make a fake nick to post here, and have a bunch of idiots wire money to me.

You think people would have learned, at the very least to check out the company to make sure it isn't a mickey mouse operation or some fly by night bullshit. Even then you still taking a huge risk if the company is legit.

[lagcam]

It will be tricky for any to survive unless they quickly gain a very good market share or have a strong existing mainstream business (like payoneer for example).

The problem they face is that they need to balance ticking everybody's boxes cost and service wise and maintaining profitability. That is probably why most of the companies sticking a foot in the water now have higher than most people would like fees to help cover their setup costs in the event that they don't gain momentum quick enough.

Interestingly, most of the people bombarding the representatives of these various companies with questions on here sound like they are end users, rather than program owners and whilst end user opinion and support is of course important, ultimately the end user who relies on these services to get paid will stick whatever card the (large) program owners send to him in the atm for his cash and you can be sure that they will not be paying $50 a year for the card.

[deanberkeley]

I would be skeptical of all of them. I used epass just for the last year or so as I was so skeptical of that even. I have switched everything to checks for now (I am in the USA so it doesn't matter) epass was just easier than going to deposit stuff.

I think Payoneer may be the ONLY one that comes out on top of this mess and makes it, but they are going to have to make their user end more friendly, and not in the way CCBill tries to make theirs better either. LOL

[Davy]

Not many. The epass situation happens only a couple of years.
We might see some smaller companies folding, because they might struggle once an industry-wide adopted alternative is found for epass.

[harvey]

well, I hope none of them shut and this industry gets some clear rules when it comes to financial issues instead of hoping that everything will be OK and fearing you'll lose your earnings from one day to another.

However, it's a very difficult scenario for start ups in this area. Epass had an objective advantage: it was the first and it was almost the only choice for the niche market of adult industry. After the Epass fiasco, many webmasters won't choose any solution, while other webmasters will be dispersed between several solutions.

On top of that, after the events we all know, I doubt any user of this kind of services will leave any money for more than a couple hours after being paid.

With the above said, I can foresee the following issues:

a) These services won't make enough from transactions and maintenance. Let's say each of these solutions signs 5000 clients (a very optimistic scenario), then they'll get up to $250000 a year in maintenance fees. Once they take the Mastercard and bank fees on their side, plus their operating costs, I doubt they'll end with more than $50k a year.

b) Of course, they'll charge on transactions, so let's say these 5000 customers "move" $5000 a month on average (another optimistic figure). That will leave them with 25M a month, which is a enormous amount of money. BUT, as I said, I doubt anyone will keep the money for more than a few hours, so at $2500 limit, they'll get 2 ATM transactions a month (on average) per client. So that's anywhere between 10 and 30k a month GROSS. Once they discount the ATM usage fees, interests and bank fees, the net will be very low.

So, they won't be able to use deposits and reserves for financial purposes (stocks, loans, fixed-term deposits, CDs, etc) and they'll need to rely on transaction fees (p2p, ATM, maintenance,etc). And unless they get tens of thousands of clients, the numbers won't close unless they have a reserve of at least a couple millions to cape the costs for a couple years while they attract new customers.

So, in short, a very difficult scenario. I think this market niche (a shrinking industry!) only allows 1 player, if any of them stands out over the other ones, then that one may survive. Another option would be that 2 or more of them get into some kind of strategic alliance.

In the meanwhile, I'll wait until I see there's a clear winner. Until then, I doubt I'll use any of these services unless I'm requested by my clients, but I'd certainly like to see one or more that prevails, it would be very good for everybody

[will76]

i just have the feeling that people will jump on the first ship that comes by without doing due diligence to find out more about the company. I predict at least a couple of these companies will be fucking people next year. Keep sending your money through a "middle man" that you do not know, good luck with that.

[darksoul]

the answer is 42

[CaptainHowdy]

Originally Posted by darksoul

the answer is 42

[elron]

how many billing companies shut down after ibill ?
you want to blame the system, fine. i rather look into the specific incident of which caused epass to lose their bank.

[harvey]

Originally Posted by elron

how many billing companies shut down after ibill ?
you want to blame the system, fine. i rather look into the specific incident of which caused epass to lose their bank.

you're comparing apples to spaceships, just saying

[will76]

Originally Posted by elron

how many billing companies shut down after ibill ?
you want to blame the system, fine. i rather look into the specific incident of which caused epass to lose their bank.

How many shut down after ibill? maybe a couple but most were gone before ibill. The big purge of third party billing was from 2000 - 2005. The first of which was drm / web800 in late 99 / early 00.

this shit never fails when it comes to "middle men" and processing money transactions. Almost all fuck up one way or another and we the customer lose OUR money.

[ThumbLord]

4 I think as in I am sure

[nsacm]

there is a reason why green dot is around, they do not do p2p.

watch for the green dot 2bil ipo