Quote:
Originally posted by Carrie@Dec 10 2003, 11:57 PM
'02 summer internext in Miami there was a group there pushing pre-paids. I believe it was called 6card.com. Cards looked real nice, had huge porn stars on the front of them with enough clothing on so that the cards could sit right next to a register at a kid's eye-level at 7-11 and not have anyone screaming.
Quite a number of problems with them. Paysites don't want to join the list of sites that accept that card unless there's a certain number of cards currently in use. It's just not worth their time to do the coding. And without a big list of sites you can use the card at, you have a hard time getting footmen to do the distribution for you. They want a product they know will sell, something they can slap down on the counter and say "Look, for $20 your customer gets access to 200 full-fledge porn sites"... not "...access to 10 full-fledge porn sites".
The store merchant gets a cut, the footman gets a cut, the regional distributor gets a cut... add webmasters into that mix with the percentages they're demanding these days and you may as well count on pennies per card once it gets back to your bank account. Although the webmasters *would* cut out the footman and the store merchant; the distributor could just mail it out direct.
The real juice to what Duocash is doing is that you can *also* use it as a genuine phone card. That's gonna be the kicker. There's already a ton of phone card distribution going on; the footmen who can walk in with a card that has a bonus of being able to use it online is going to have a hot product on his hands from the merchant's point of view.
This *could* be big; depending on the consumer's reaction to it in the brick-and-mortar stores.
R_n is the *only* person I see making a visible push to put a porn credit card into the hands of the surfers, with his CyberAgeCard.com site. AFAIK you can't use it anywhere else than on his sites, but it's a start. (Slightly off-topic but close enough... it's cards.)
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Actually, the REAL kicker is that DUOCASH is NOT selling phone cards. What we are doing is to act as the VISA model.... ie, we are ENABLING existing phone cards that are already on the shelves.
Many of you (KK of course also....HI Ya sweetie!) are right when you say the problem is in dsitribution. The same thing happened with Amex....they issue a proprietary card that they must 1) Convince the merchant to accept while 2) get the customer to carry. That's a closed system and it's VERY hard to start and grow.
With the open system, such as Visa....ANY bank can issue the card, and any card can carry the logo.
This is how we have done it with DUOCASH. You can envision the telcos and the telcard companies as the banks....any of which can carry the DUOCASH logo, and we are the interchange through which the monies are transfered to the merchants.
As to the denomination problems, There are new phone cards out now that can be loaded at the point of sale.....up to $100.... and we are also about 4 weeks from the customer being able to reload the cards by phone or online.
As for distribution, we are currently completing deals in the EU and Australia....as well as the far east....for distribution in these regions as well as the US.
If any of you have any questions at all about this..... I have no life (:-) ), and you can always reach me at
+1 954 650 5789
Michael Sperber
mike@duocash.com