One difference between StormPay and ePassporte is ePassporte is processed by Visa and StormPay is processed by Kagi. One name is known and people may not want to 'strangers' processing their funds

I've regularly read all GFY's topics that referred to Epassporte theme. All I know about Epassporte it's just two things:

1. It accepts CVV2 code cards only (most of European banks have not supported);

2. It's TOOOOO expensive ($50 fee for outgoing checks, $5 fee for every $100 loading/unloading, etc.)

to 4Pics

yes Epoch does not own Epassporte oficially

Maybe Epoch owners own Epassporte too? :glugglug

I think any progress in this arena is helpful for everyone on the damn planet... Currency, barter units, whatever the fuck you want to call it -- it's our fucking money -- let's do something about it.

I don't want to live on a cashless planet.

:BangBang:VISA

Ya know, another funny thing Kimmy you mentioned StormPay is untested.

Hmmm, that's interesting cause its up to a tad over 89,000 affiliates worldwide already.

What's the total affiliate base up to for ePassporte so far? :Graucho

I have a couple of comments, I'm just not clear on the whole thing.

1) How many surfers have epassporte accounts? About 5. The rest aren't going to sift through their bank statements, look for the deposit amounts, get verified, then come back and sign up for your site. By that time, they are well "over it."

2) PayPal accounts are ubiquitous, which made it a great option for Webmasters. They were everywhere, which caused millions of surfers to sign up. Epassporte is a flash in the pan...like Yahoo Auctions and UBid trying to compete with Ebay.

3) If I want to pay another Webmaster money, I use PayPal. It's well within their guidelines. Just because that person may be an Adult Webmaster, does not qualify the transaction as "Adult."

4) The company is ran out of Curacao -- a shady business haven. Home to countless gambling sites, tax shelters, and other questionable companies who wish to avoid some sort of US law or prosecution. If you have a problem with them, you are shit out of luck. I don't think the Better Business Bureau has an office in Curacao, lol.

5) Epoch is obviously affiliated with ePassporte, and they hired Kimmy Kim to spam their program. Pretty much anyone can hire Kimmy Kim to spam their program these days, she comes cheap after "leaving," ahem, many of the companies you see here on the board.

It's a neat idea on paper, but in reality, it's worthless.

so brocklander, you don't think that guys who are used to paying for porn from their PayPal accounts will sign up for another similar type of program in order to maintain that security?

What I'm looking for is something to protect the guys who are used to that one extra layer between merchant and customer...50% of PayPal transactions are funded with a cc, it's not that they don't HAVE credit cards, they don't want that individual merchant showing up on their statement.

So they fund their PayPal (or new epassporte account) and all the wife sees is "PayPal"

Of course, now that PayPal is out of the picture, they won't have much choice, but I think it may give an edge to the merchant who is offering an alternative with the same advantage through a new program.

I guess whether epassporte is the program to do that is still up for debate, but I hope it happens.

Hahaah, brocklander, you can always be counted on to weigh in with some kind of moronic negatives when my name comes up. I could set my watch by it.

ePassporte is closely supervised by Visa International -- perhaps more closely than ANY other alternate payment/pre-paid card service in the world. And Visa LIKES the way we do things, they LOVE the fact that we work with them and they keep an eye on every dollar, making the fact that the company is in Curacao completely irrelevant to anything but legal issues for some transaction types.

Your comments about paying another webmaster with Paypal not being adult are rather poorly thought out. Pay another webmaster for content you purchase and yes, it does become adult. Think before you type eh buddy?

No one's ever said that Epoch owners do not have some overlap with ePassporte investors, as a matter of fact if you'd read before you post you would see that I have confirmed that TWICE in this thread.

I'm not sure where you come up with all these "MANY" companies that you tout my having been with... there was Cashquest, CCBill and SIC. Over more than 4 years in this business and with the exception of SIC (and Lord knows that fiasco is very well known to everyone) the other two were long term positions, or perhaps in your haste to slur me, you didn't count like you didn't read?

And don't ever think I come cheap.

correct me if I'm wrong, but epoch ccbill and the likes charge 10-15%....

5$/100$ is what... 5%?


and for the check, why not just do a bank wire?

maybe I'm missing something....

Yea but 50$ to have a check sent is still laughable, and as far as I know they still don't offer wires. I could be wrong. There system doesnt seem to have any automated way to rithdraw any money (besides using an ATM) and I still kinda feel like my moneys being held hostage. Any way you slice it I'm going to have to pay 37$ + to get at my cash.


you have to pay them 5% to put money in... (more if you deposit less than 100$) and you have to pay a minium of 2$ (the withdrawl fee) to take money out.... I'm not seeing the upside unless you plan on spending all the money in your account...and I don't.

Oops, almost missed this.

CVV2 support is required by Visa at this point in the processing world, unless I am mistaken. That does not mean that every bank is compliant, just that they should be. I have a Paypal Mastercard and interestingly enough, IT CANT be used to buy airline tickets on certain airlines because it is NOT compliant and the airline is.

For your own accounts, there are a couple of things we require to verify if your card that you are attempting to load with is not CVV2 compliant, and if you need to discuss this then please email me regarding it -- [email protected]

As far as too expensive, these fees are based on cc loading of the ePassporte account, once we get clearance from all parties on ACH load and offload, the fees for those types of loads will be structured accordingly. We are not in the check writing business and given how easy it is to spend your money in your ePassporte account -- since your account is automatically assigned a Virtual Visa number, unlike the 60 day wait with Paypal -- we find most people use their money... for everything from buying plane tickets or books to paying their utility bills online with the Virtual Visa number.

One more time, no system is perfect and if there were one system that were right for every scenario then there would only be one system...

Well seeing as I make money with spotbrokers and you guys dont offer any other payment method. Its irritating.

I was mistaken thinking it was on the merchant's side... :)


I think the 50$ is good IMHO...


for us that is... wouldn't you spend that remaining balance, rather than going ahead and paying 50$ fees?

marketting approach to sell more I think :D

ALSO... 5% might be a little of a hassle...

then why not TAKE IT UPON YOURSELF.... offer them 5% discount lol...

I dunno, I think it's a good alternative

What about additional funding methods for the standard epassporte card like wire transfer etc.?

How so ?

Spotbrokers and ePassporte are two different companies entirely, I just happen to be part of both.

We made the decision to make payouts only with ePassporte months ago and it's one that works for us. The administrative costs for using it are perfect and it's a clean system where we never hear someone saying 'my check is late... the postman put my check in the wrong box... my bank is charging me 15 dollars to cash a 50 dollar check since I live in Yugoslavia..." etc.

Paypal can't be trusted from our standpoint, since they tend to change the rules at will. We absorb all the fees associated with creating ePassporte accounts, loading the payouts on the ePassporte accounts, etc, so it's really a cracking deal for everyone concerned.

And we've never hid the fact that we pay out that way, it's been rather plain from the beginning...

I joined when your site said it would be paying out via paypal. I was using it about 2 weeks before any mention of epassporte was made. I do appreciate the free epassport account, but this doesnt chaneg the fact I will have to pay more to get the money i earned. :2 cents:

I don't like paypal either but

$1.50 for a check VS 50$ for a check
No bank transfers as of yet VS free bank transfers

I would like to get all my payments through epassporte. I got an ATM in the same building I live that accepts epassporte visa (saved my ass yesterday too). Superb! :)

I think you may be confused, since our site didn't ever say we'd be paying out by Paypal, only that we take it as a method of payment for inbound monies, and that was even taken down for a time due to Paypal's antics... and we were only taking money via wire or ePassporte...

I know it's kind of a pain in the ass.. New company and all that.

Personally I am using it to pay stuff like hosting and to buy shit online. Working well for that. The ATM thing is good too.

I expect them to have the other stuff pretty quick, like withdrawing/loading from bank etc.

Cheers,
Backov

I still think you guys should offer checks for payments over 200$ or somthing like that. Would bi weekly checks for over 200$ be that hard to implement? (Yes I know some banks charge fees and checks can get lost.... Neither have ever happend to me so Maybe I just havent been around long enough)

I highly doubt thier motivation for this is stimlation of the market. :)

I am trying to save my money becasue Im a broke-ass college kid. I like to have as much of my money as possable located somewhere I can earn a return on it. Not someplace that will force me to spend it.



Paypal went down hill when it was purchased by ebay... Same way vivendi fucked MP3.com up. I'm not trying to say paypal is better I'm just saying i still have some gripes with epassporte. I do wish them all the sucess in the world.... doesn't change the fact I want a cheep way to move my cash around. :thumbsup

I don't blame you for wanting a cheap way to move your money around :)

One thing to keep in mind about Visa and MC, especially Visa -- they have a goal of getting their profits on pre-paid/debit products to match those of credit products.

And they want to push pre-paid as much as they possibly can over the next few years... it changes the scope of their business and their banks businesses completely in the card market.

Can you take funds out directly to your account yet using epassporte?

Dude, didn't we go over this a couple times already ;))))))

How does it allow for totally anonymous online use ?

Since you don't have any experience running a paysite, I'll type slowly for you:

1) To answer your question in the first paragraph, "no." For the most part, people signed up for PayPal because of sites like Ebay. It didn't come on the scene for Adult and subscription payments until much later. Again, PayPal was ubiquitous...it was everywhere which was it's own best marketing ploy (the same reason Microsoft products -- let's take Word for example -- took off). If I have a Word document, chances are I can send it to a friend and he'll be able to view it, print it, etc. It was the same with PayPal.

PayPal was successful not because of porn my friend. Anyone who says likewise is a complete moron. And again, if you think that a surfer is going to get all heated up then go through all that verifcation bullshit, you are sadly mistaken. You might get a very small %, but that's about it.

2) Since you don't run a paysite, I'm going to guess you don't know much about secondary or tertiary processors and cascading billing. To implement either PayPal or ePassporte into your existing affiliate and processing solution isn't the easiest thing in the world. From a merchant standpoint, it's a pain in the ass.

3) Again as a result of your nonexistent experience, the wife doesn't see "Jim's Gay Twink Shack" on their CC, even if they use CCBill, Ibill, Epoch, etc. They generally see the name of the processor, followed by the name of the company the processor is transacting for. Even with PayPal, the charge shows up something like: "PayPal*(name of company)"

4) Even if you have your own merchant account, it's common knowledge to name your company non-adult sounding for a) the wife and b) to blend in with the rest of the charges on the credit card (heck, I wanted to call my company Joe's Pizza Shack, but they wouldn't let me). ;-)

If all your looking for is that one extra layer, I'm afraid you are looking in the wrong place. Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe the new Visa regs insist the name of the actual company getting the revenue has to be on the CC statement (or something along those lines, there are probably exceptions).

1) Don't flatter yourself on my weighing in every time your post -- in fact, I invite you to point out the last time I replied directly to one of your posts...must be close to a year ago maybe? Nice try, though!

Futhermore, replying to all your posts would be a full-time job (not to mention a waste of time).

2) Very convenient your ommission of point #1 in my post. And before you spout off some excuse like "I don't want to divulge that sort of information," let me answer it for you: barely any.

3) That's great you and Visa are such chums. But what kind of legal recourse does the merchant and the surfer have if shit hits the fan? Uncle Sam can't do much down in the Caribbean...

4) You need to rethink *your* statements regarding PayPal transactions between Adult Webmasters. What you say is correct on paper, but you need to face reality my dear. You're saying not one Webmaster has bought content from another recently? Uhh...

PayPal has no infrastructure in place to monitor such things, nor would it be in their best interest to even pursue the letter of the law like that. That's too much of a grey area and a source of revenue for them.

Of course, I imagine someone from time to time types in "payment for 14 hardcore bukkake videos" in the message section of the PayPal form...but people like that deserve to get barred.

5) "No one's ever said that Epoch owners do not have some overlap with ePassporte investors"

Uhm, your response to 4pics makes it pretty clear about your desire to maintain a politically correct and ambiguous connection between the two companies. I'm guessing that's because the bigwigs at Epoch told you to do that. Nice try.


Not your usual response KK, I must say I am pretty disappointed...a huge lack of intelligence & wit, skirting the main points, personal attacks. You tired or something? Or is getting to you that you've gone from a good position at CCBill, to Vice President of GFY Spamming faster than you can say "SIC."

:Graucho

Oh please, try a little harder on all fronts. You think my response was disappointing, try re-reading your post.

No one has glossed over anything and quite frankly, the bigwigs at Epoch don't tell me to do any such thing. Nor did the bigwigs at CCBill, or the bigwigs anywhere else. And I think you know that. I phrase as I want to and that's the end of it.

Tired? of your foolishness perhaps.

Oh, and Paypal might not have been built on porn, but I'll be damned if AOL wasn't.

Since we know Epoch is involved that pretty much says to any smart webmaster that they should stay away. Far Away!

Is there a reason you're such a total asshole? Did your mommy not hold you enough when you were a baby?

1. I never said PayPal was successful because of porn. I never even said that any of my customers intially signed up for PayPal because of porn (though I know for a fact that some of mine have because I've walked them through the process personally).

I never said I run pay sites either so I'm not exactly sure why you keep pointing that out...

I actually do very little of my total business through PayPal, only $100,000 last year.

HOWEVER, I do know my customers and I know why they use PayPal as opposed to whipping out their credit card. Now that they're aware it's a possibility, I'm thinking that some would switch over because they like the protection.


2. I've used PayPal for almost 3 years and it's integrated into my systems just fine. I don't use it for my affiliate program in any way but to accept payment from customers it works just fine. Our system is fully automated and we didn't have the slightest problem getting things set up. It was never a pain in my ass.


3. They do if they pay with a credit card (and that's only a recent development). However, if they fund their PayPal account with their bank account it doesn't. You seem to be completely glossing over the fact that 50% of PayPal transactions DO NOT fund from a credit card. They fund from bank accounts. It shows up only as "ECHECK PAYPAL" I'm not talking about PayPal payments that are made with credit cards.

This is the same reason I don't just take checks to make up for the difference. I know my customers don't want to see my company's name on their bank statement in any form.


4. Contrary to YOUR belief, I'm not a moron. My company's name isn't "phone sex is fun". It's totally "non-adult sounding", but that doesn't matter. If they don't know what it is, they question it. They'd question a new processor too, but that could be easily explained by saying "it's like PayPal".

Third time.

How is it anonymous ?

Second time.

What about additional funding methods for the standard epassporte card like wire transfer etc.?

It's possible but you need to pay them a fee :321GFY

As I said before ePassporte is very expensive system for now

Are you sure? I got a personal epassporte card and can't find any way to fund it execpt from another card.

I've learned over the years the best approach is to cover your bases and have all the systems out there that make sense to your bottom line and the customers needs available on your sites.

You ever look at a gas station pump these days? Some of them have 50 stickers of all the ways you can pay for gas.

ahhh, I mean commercial account, sorry

Seems like there is still no really <i>good</i> solution for the PayPal problem.

And I say this with spam in my sig.

<b>epassporte</b> has a relatively nonfluid signup process that will wreck your hardon. visa ownz you.

<b>stormpay</b> is small, and may seem a bit sketchy, even adult webmasters raise their eyebrows.

<b>yahoo direct</b> is yahoo, which has a historically tenuous relationship with adult.

<b>next?</b>

I'm really impressed how many people promote and maybe use StormPay:eek2

You need a credit card for this...what about those that dont use/have credit cards...at least with paypal all you needed was a bank acct...
With stormpay and yahoo's paydirect all you need is a bank account.
FT**

Uhh wasn't Epassport advertised by Epoch fellas some months ago?

did it changed ownership or what?