Announcing Mpayy Secure Payments Widget & Bracket Challenge!

It's 3:40 AM on Sunday morning, but I'm giddy as a school-boy and felt it important to announce the exciting new functionality we've just completed launching.

Secure Payments Widget is Here!

I've forecast the Mpayy Secure Payments Widget a number of times in this space, but finally it is in production and ready for all to use.



(Here it is, though the blog post CSS is changing the color of the background in this post.)

Mpayy is utilizing the Clearspring Launchpad Widget syndication platform in order to make it one-click to the addition of the widget anywhere our Members wish to use it.

The Development and Product teams at Mpayy and US Bank discussed Widget security extensively. The question of, "Why did PayPal redirect the payment piece to their own website" with the subtext of, "clearly these guys know a whole lot about security." The concern about "spoofing" is very real. Clearspring makes it incredibly easy to grab some part of a website as a Widget, and it would be simple to take the front end from PayPal, Causes, or others and change the Widget file to use JavaScript that posts sensitive User Names and Passwords to another source. The criminal could then use the User Names and Passwords on the real site to steal money.

As a result, we decided to pop up a small version of the website so users can verify our SSL certificates and see the URL and iconic Padlock to demonstrate the security of the page. Only then do we request Password. I spoke with Joel Pulliam, VP Product at Clearspring about providing a Verisign-esque service to validate the source of the Widget, but they declined to do so due to concerns about spoofing the certification. If you look at NOCA's One-Click Pay literally asks you to put your Bank Routing Number and Account Number into a facebook page. Caveat emptor, pal.

Mpayy's widget can be used by any of its Members, and provides a simple and easy way for Online Sellers and Charities to add the payments widget to any page they wish with limited technical prowess. On 3/16, we will make it server driven so Members can pre-populate Payee, which will be more helpful. Mpayy will process payments for non-profits and charities for free, and hopes to see it employed very frequently with large charities.

Get Paid w/ Mpayy - Mpayy Bracket Challenge

Mpayy announces the (up to) $25,000 "Mpayy Bracket Challenge" for all Personal and Mobile Merchant account-holders.



Our good friends at PoolTracker have a wonderful White Label system that allows us to customize with our own header. Sign up now, and submit your bracket before the tournament starts on March 20th.



The payouts to the Bracket Challenge can be found here. We will obviously pay users into their Mpayy accounts where they can withdraw it directly to a Linked Bank account or send to someone, and soon to shop online.

Other New Items

Three other notable items:

• Free Donation Processing - Mpayy will process donations for free for Charities, Non-Profits, and political campaigns. Zero transaction fees will be taken through any of the Mpayy Channels - online, mobile, social networking
• In-Line Validation - We added local JavaScript in-line validation to the Personal Information page of each account. We require a number of fields for the identity check, and when we launched, we had some unfriendly validation rules around Mobile Phone number, email address and Date of Birth. Those have hopefully been ameliorated.
• Person-to-Person Text Notification - We originally did not send an immediate text message notification for Person-to-Person transactions, but determined it was a necessity to communicate immediately the action taken when paying a friend for dinner, quick loans or other expenditures, especially in the world where folks are paying each other through our mobile site.

Many Praises for US Bank

At my last job, subsequent builds made me feel as if we were getting worse at our jobs. In days subsequent to builds products, or the whole site was dusted for hours and days on end. This build went off without a hitch, with just about 45 minute delay. Our partners at US Bank (NYSE: USB) have an incredible amount of experience in developing software generally, and enterprise payment & mobile applications specifically. We remark regularly that in many ways we are a non-startup startup. We mean this in the fact that US Bank is an incredible Partner to have, and from day 1, we piggy-backed on world class security, operations and development assets.

More to come, now SIGN UP, it's FREE!

Electronic Payments Pricing Compared

Last week I presented the capabilities matrix that juxtaposed Mpayy with the other payment processing systems available for plug-in to any eCommerce website and for use to conduct payment processing for online sales that don't involve a web shopping cart.

Today, we present a comparison of the pricing for each of the various channels offered by each of the systems.



Mpayy wins in all categories on the basis of pricing, and was designed to do so. Mpayy is a multi-sided payments network of buyers and multiple types of sellers. There's a great article in the Harvard Business Review that indicates it is important to subsidize one-side of the network. Mpayy does this by providing the 1% Cash Back on purchase amounts over $50, 100 free Person-to-Person Transfers/month, and providing for $0 overdraft fees when users' checking accounts are empty.

On the Mobile Commerce side, Mpayy is well-positioned to take advantage of any growth in this new type of sale. PayPal does have a model, and is working with companies like Mporia which hosts mobile commerce websites for companies like Buy.com. As you can see, PayPal forces those merchants to pay through the nose for this unique capability, though those prices will come down as adoption of Mpayy grows.

PayPal rates are closer to those of Mpayy, though online selling merchants are increasingly in opposition to eBay/PayPal, which is restricting payments to sellers for up to 21 days for any transaction eBay deems questionable. Further, there is some evidence that sellers with a spotty track record and new sellers are being forced to use PayPal. Large retailers are reluctant to adopt PayPal for two reasons: i) eBay clears billions of dollars of merchandise competing with the retailers and providing eBay with a competitive advantage by possessing their data; and ii) "gray market" goods that move through eBay will undermine the retailers' own goods.

Google Checkout offers $0.20 + 2.00% for Internet Point of Sale transactions. However, Google only accepts credit cards, and increases indirect costs through the onus of integrating to their API's, including providing complete information on everything in a user's shopping cart rather than just clearing the transaction. While we have no direct evidence, this would suggest that Google is taking a loss on every transaction in light of credit card costs to merchants being so high. Further, our discussions with the largest retailers indicate it is unlikely Google Checkout will receive significant adoption among "MegaRetailer.coms" because they know the value of their data and don't want to give Google all of that information.

Revolution Money is on here because they are currently offering $25 account opening bonuses and claiming no fees. As discussed on Friday, Revolution Money does not have a merchant model, and funds sent through it are not guaranteed. Further, they require a pre-funding step rather than just treating their account as a pass-through account. Revolution Money is seeking a lead list for its credit cards, and they do have plenty of other fees built into the system should anyone run afoul.

Electronic Payment Processing Systems Compared

The following is a side-by-side comparison of Mpayy with its electronic payments processing competitors.



It is certainly possible to feel this is biased towards Mpayy, as is my tendency. However, this highlights design decisions that were made in constructing the application.

For consumers, Mpayy created a multi-channel application (online, mobile, social networking, and internet retail partner sites). Further, consistently, Cash Back is the highest ranked reward by consumers. Mpayy provides 1% Cash Back on Purchase amounts over $50, and will provide soft dollar rewards that can be used as cash based on balances stored in the application. That is coming in the next few months.

For Merchants, the primary concerns were the price and security. The MOST expensive Mpayy will be is $0.20 + 2.00%. Google Checkout is offering that price, and we will certainly go below it with the right internet retailer partner or for PeSA and ECMTA members should they approve us. However, Mpayy also takes 100% of the fraud liability, not so with Google Checkout, and provides merchants with guaranteed payments, which GC does not.

On site integration, PayPal and Google Checkout provide relatively extensive API's to integrate to, and Google Checkout requires merchants to maintain their SKU's within the application, which is not practical as the size of the merchant grows. Mpayy's simple session transfer can be developed to within hours, and the AJAX Checkout window will be packaged up and plug and play when it launches as well.