Event
Summary
When Tom Fisher, General Manager of CCBill got his letter from Amex last
week, he was concerned about his 4,000 customers that he would no longer
be able to process transactions for. We're really disappointed that American
Express decided to take this action," he said. "We're very sorry for the
inconvenience it's going to cause our customers."
Market
Impact
The adult industry is a one billion dollar industry. As consumers continue
to require adult products, adult sites will be the first to lead online
transaction development that doesn't make use of credit card payment systems.
It is obstacles like this that create opportunities for smart entrepreneurs.
Consumers
will find ways to purchase increments of pure digital cash through third-parties,
and instead of accepting credit card payments, adult sites will start
accepting digital cash. This is a win for both the sites and consumers.
Adult and other sites will be able to process transactions faster and
cheaper, and consumers will receive their products faster and easier.
True
digital cash will be dependent upon digital cash providers who are able
to marry economics and cryptography. As consumers figure out how to obtain
digital cash, these sites will lead the market in figuring out how best
to accept digital cash transactions. Where there is a market, there is
a clever entrepreneur ready to pounce on the opportunity.
User
Recommendations
Digital cash providers will have to make sure their digital cash meets
the following requirements:
- Secure
- Anonymous
- Portable (physical independence)
- Infinite duration (until destroyed)
- Two-way (unrestricted)
- Off-line capable
- Divisible (fungible)
- Wide acceptability (trust)
- User-friendly (simple)
- Unit-of-value freedom
Companies like EntryPoint.Com will take the lead in supplying adult customers
with products. Amex has basically said that they don't want the business
from this market segment. With digital cash providers like EntryPoint.Com
offering an alternative to credit cards, e-commerce providers to the adult
products market will have their clients back online in no time. Credit
card middleware will no longer be needed.
With alternatives
like Digital Cash providers (e.g. EntryPoint.Com), e-commerce providers
in this market will be back online in no time, and providers will no longer
have to go through credit card middleware.