Duocash adult prepaid phone cards

[cj]

http://www.duocash.com/merchants/AdultMerc...hantInfo3.0.pdf - just got an email saying these guys are now offering adult transactions ...

has anyone had any experience using this system for mainstream or for adult?

interested to hear your views on the whole idea of prepaid phone cards for porn access ... i have always thought it an interesting idea but difficult to implement but this seems really easy ...

[Dravyk]

I've always liked the concept too. Online purchasing of it helps solve the lack of real-world distribution problems too. Apparently they can be bought by phone in the US and Canada, and anywhere (?) in the world via a checking account. Nice find, CJ.

[gonzo]

Theyve been arond now for over 2 years.
As an ex-competitor Ive had both extensive conversations with them as well as done a ton of research on the subject and the company.

Hit me in email and Ill be happy to foward you all the comparison charts etc that I have from a year ago.

[cj]

Although they have been in biz for 2 years, this appears to be the first time they have offered adult services ...

little concerned that they are also processing for kezaa ... talk about jumping on the 'high risk' bandwagon!!

but, they allow several standard phone cards (not sure which companies) to be spent at sites who are using them to process ... that part makes me excited ... if I think of the number of times i've bought a phonecard in the states while i'm travelling only to come home with half of the credit still left, i'd probably have several hundred dollars laying around ...

someone told me a number this morning ... there is $600 000 000 sitting dormant on phonecards at any one time ...

[gonzo]

Originally posted by cj@Dec 10 2003, 07:40 PM
Although they have been in biz for 2 years, this appears to be the first time they have offered adult services ...

little concerned that they are also processing for kezaa ... talk about jumping on the 'high risk' bandwagon!!

but, they allow several standard phone cards (not sure which companies) to be spent at sites who are using them to process ... that part makes me excited ... if I think of the number of times i've bought a phonecard in the states while i'm travelling only to come home with half of the credit still left, i'd probably have several hundred dollars laying around ...

someone told me a number this morning ... there is $600 000 000 sitting dormant on phonecards at any one time ...

IM not sure why they are just now talking about adult. I met them at both shows last year. They had a booth in Florida and Vegas. The adult restriction never came up. BTW there were 2 other prepaid psuedo solutions at both shows as well.

The challenge for every company has been the distrubution angle. Of course had the mainstream boys down here gotten funding instead of worrying about lectures on sexual harrassment wed know if our distribution model was valid.

Everybody that has tried this idea was banking on making money off of the float and the breakage...

[Hell Puppy]

The phone card model of distribution is a good one, but it has problems matching up with adult the way business is currently done.

First off, the retail merchants only want to stock your lowest denominations. The big seller is the $20 card. Now the retailer wants a cut of that, there are a few ways to deal him his cut, but suffice to say that $20 face value is probably going to be more like $17 by the time the poor guy goes to use it.

Currently webmasters do not like to sell memberships that cheap. So that's one problem. We haven't even talked about trying to carve off a transaction fee for the processor on top of all of this. And also keep in mind that it is an absolute bitch to setup recurring with a pre-paid model.

It is a good solution for micropayments....I can see some real use for a one time viewing of a video or something like that.

No one has solved the pre-paid equation for adult yet. I have a few ideas on my shelf that I'd like to test that are variations of the theme, but they require more of a time, money and technical investment than anyone is currently willing to throw around. GonZo and I tried it with some mainstreamers last year.....we wont be doing that again.

[mojobill]

Every process I've seen or read about deals with some sort of online payment system, or card funding....... is there a reason online processing is the only thing being thought about?



Last edited by fatbaby at Dec 10 2003, 11:03 PM

[Hell Puppy]

Originally posted by fatbaby@Dec 10 2003, 11:03 PM
Every process I've seen or read about deals with some sort of online payment system, or card funding....... is there a reason online processing is the only thing being thought about?

Actually with pre-paid, especially phone cards, you can buy them from a retailer which essentially funds them with cash.

But this is also one of the things that makes recurring near impossible....without a tie back to a credit card or bank account, there's no way to refill it....if it's empty, it's empty.

[gonzo]

Originally posted by fatbaby@Dec 10 2003, 11:03 PM
Every process I've seen or read about deals with some sort of online payment system, or card funding....... is there a reason online processing is the only thing being thought about?

We can install a callback door and then send em an address to put the check in the mail. That will probably be made obsolete by the Dragon BBS Credit Card door though.

[sextoyking]

Gonzo

Dragon BBS was many many years ago. I knew alot of sysops who used there shit....

[*KK*]

There are two big hurdles in pre-paid cards. One is distribution, the other acceptance. If you arent doing a card with a Visa or Mastercard logo on it, you have to convince the merchants to accept the product, and make the changes necessary for use. No merchant wants to go to that expense unless there are already a widely distributed network of cards. Cardholders don't want cards they cant use everywhere, the push, especially here in the states by consumers, is to get rid of all the different store brand cards and so forth we used to have and just keep the big brand cards to use everywhere.

Thus you create a Catch -22 situation -- if you cant get merchants to go to the time and expense to accept the cards, then you cant get consumers to get the cards and use them.

Perfect example of this situation is Discover. Owned and backed by Sears, one of the worlds largest domestic consumer creditors and been around for at least 15 years with decent distribution. With the ability to use those cards in EVERY Sears on the planet including catalog sales from day one, where is the distribution on them today? When they first came out they were sending them to Sears customers like candy. If you didn't activate the first one they would keep on sending them to you until you did, even though you could only use it at Sears. But they had a tremendous credit market base to build from with all those Sears cards out there...

The issuing side of Visa has no problem telling you that it takes millions of cards actively being used to begin to have a viable brand. Mastercard and Visa running on the same platform gives them even more viability among consumers, since pretty much every merchant that takes one takes the other -- there's nothing radically different about the process.

Think about Amex too, I want to say its been around longer than Visa and not quite so long as Mastercard.

If you look at the percentage of your sales broken down by payment method you start to see just how lopsided the distribution is on it.

Every possible payment option is a good option -- there is no doubt of that in my mind. Just realize that so long as Visa/MC are an option for consumers that is what most of them will take.

I believe the figure that was quoted recently was that 12% of consumer transactions worldwide were handled with those products. That is a truly scary number.

[sarettah]

Vending Machines.... In adult stores, titty bars, juice bars, bathrooms...

with an enter the amount you want to buy option.....

You put the cash in the machine, card pops out precoded for the dollar amount....

end of the month, retailer gets his cut from the machine tally.....

*************************************
2nd thought (wow, 2 in a row, damn red letter day)

How come anyone has not set up an "adult only" version of online paying like paypal ?

Shouldn't be that hard to do....hmmm.

[gonzo]

Originally posted by *KK*@Dec 10 2003, 11:50 PM
There are two big hurdles in pre-paid cards. One is distribution, the other acceptance. If you arent doing a card with a Visa or Mastercard logo on it, you have to convince the merchants to accept the product, and make the changes necessary for use. No merchant wants to go to that expense unless there are already a widely distributed network of cards. Cardholders don't want cards they cant use everywhere, the push, especially here in the states by consumers, is to get rid of all the different store brand cards and so forth we used to have and just keep the big brand cards to use everywhere.

Thus you create a Catch -22 situation -- if you cant get merchants to go to the time and expense to accept the cards, then you cant get consumers to get the cards and use them.

Perfect example of this situation is Discover. Owned and backed by Sears, one of the worlds largest domestic consumer creditors and been around for at least 15 years with decent distribution. With the ability to use those cards in EVERY Sears on the planet including catalog sales from day one, where is the distribution on them today? When they first came out they were sending them to Sears customers like candy. If you didn't activate the first one they would keep on sending them to you until you did, even though you could only use it at Sears. But they had a tremendous credit market base to build from with all those Sears cards out there...

The issuing side of Visa has no problem telling you that it takes millions of cards actively being used to begin to have a viable brand. Mastercard and Visa running on the same platform gives them even more viability among consumers, since pretty much every merchant that takes one takes the other -- there's nothing radically different about the process.

Think about Amex too, I want to say its been around longer than Visa and not quite so long as Mastercard.

If you look at the percentage of your sales broken down by payment method you start to see just how lopsided the distribution is on it.

Every possible payment option is a good option -- there is no doubt of that in my mind. Just realize that so long as Visa/MC are an option for consumers that is what most of them will take.

I believe the figure that was quoted recently was that 12% of consumer transactions worldwide were handled with those products. That is a truly scary number.

Deja Vu...

Wheres that thread when we were discusssing how viable Epassporte could be?

I still agree with some of the things you say and disagree with others.


Distribution and acceptance remain the challenge. And that goes for Epassporte too...

[Hell Puppy]

Eggsackly....

Merchant acceptance, in the form of the webmaster, is actually the easier part of this equation as long as you dont make it a pain in the ass to signup. It gets easier every day, as I think the majority of us would try putting a button for just about anything on our join page so long as it didn't preclude using one of the existing forms of payment.

The users on the other hand are a lot tougher to crack. You've gotta some give them incentive to want to buy in and gain their trust. At the same time, the buy in process has to be both painless but also secure against scam. That's a *tough* formula.

[*KK*]

Originally posted by gonzo@Dec 10 2003, 09:42 PM

Distribution and acceptance remain the challenge. And that goes for Epassporte too...

I'm sure you notice the big Visa logo on every ePassporte card

And you still cant imagine how much its cost in development even with that...

[Carrie]

'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.)



Last edited by Carrie at Dec 11 2003, 03:04 AM

[el pres]

I know of a couple of companies in Spain working with prepaid cards.

They sell 20 euro cards in bulk to sexshops for 10 euros a piece,
the cards work only with their site though.

But if you've got the distribution covered,
it's just the same as paying the webmaster 50%,
you get the other 50% in advance and there's no processing fees,
just the cost of printing the cards.

[*KK*]

CyberAge isn't Ron, fyi, Carrie, unless he's on a secret buying spree

Edit to add -- putting a card with a near naked chick on a convenience store counter or in a mans wallet isn't going to sell more porn, it's just creating a stigma for the consumer. Perfect example of this is the funny look on so many mens faces when they are buying condoms



Last edited by *KK* at Dec 11 2003, 01:43 AM

[cj]

Originally posted by Hell Puppy@Dec 11 2003, 12:54 AM
Eggsackly....

Merchant acceptance, in the form of the webmaster, is actually the easier part of this equation as long as you dont make it a pain in the ass to signup. It gets easier every day, as I think the majority of us would try putting a button for just about anything on our join page so long as it didn't preclude using one of the existing forms of payment.

The users on the other hand are a lot tougher to crack. You've gotta some give them incentive to want to buy in and gain their trust. At the same time, the buy in process has to be both painless but also secure against scam. That's a *tough* formula.

Hellpuppy, I was thinking the same line as you with both of your posts above ...

Many adult merchants may not be prepared to sell a subscription for $9.95 or $4.95 or whatever but I am ;-) At the end of the day, we are all throwing shit at the wall and seeing which chunks stick in the processing world at the moment and this company *seems* to make the process a lot easier than the setup for anything else we've tried lately ...

IF its easy as they claim it is, there may be a lot of clientelle with the attitude 'may as well give it a go' ...

The deciding factor for whether this company succeeds or not seems to be whether they can take advantage of the dormant funds on a big enough market share of phone card companies ... ie those companies who already have cards in consumers hands

lots of good info on this page, thanks all!

[gonzo]

Originally posted by Carrie@Dec 11 2003, 02:57 AM
'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.)

It often amazes me how many people you meet in person that really doesnt pay any attention to who you are...

Carrie did you get any information from them on all of this?

[gonzo]

Originally posted by cj+Dec 11 2003, 06:14 AM-->