Vindicia And Merchant E-Solutions Partner In New Payment Solution

Today Vindicia and Merchant e-Solutions announced that the two companies were partnering in order to extend Vindicia's CashBox billing system into a true turnkey payment solution suitable for use by virtual worlds, virtual goods businesses, and other online merchants. CashBox now features integrated support for the Merchant e-Solutions (MeS) payment platform which allows client merchants to process payments in 150 different global currencies from both credit and debit sources. Additionally, CashBox features web-based transaction reporting, tools designed to optimize customer retention, and chargeback management tools.

"I think one of the thoughts and strategies we certainly have, and our opinion, is that the growth in online business is going to continue despite what we’re going through with this economic downturn," said Sanjay Sarathy, SVP of Marketing at Vindicia. "In some ways the downturn makes that growth more important for some merchants. Whether you think about it in context of virtual worlds or online content, the idea of driving customer acquisition and retention is top of the line for vendors these days. It’s not just payment, it’s how to broaden access to customers and get them purchasing over and over again."

Today Vindicia and Merchant e-Solutions announced that the two companies were partnering in order to extend Vindicia's CashBox billing system into a true turnkey payment solution suitable for use by virtual worlds, virtual goods businesses, and other online merchants. CashBox now features integrated support for the Merchant e-Solutions (MeS) payment platform which allows client merchants to process payments in 150 different global currencies from both credit and debit sources. Additionally, CashBox features web-based transaction reporting, tools designed to optimize customer retention, and chargeback management tools.

"I think one of the thoughts and strategies we certainly have, and our opinion, is that the growth in online business is going to continue despite what we’re going through with this economic downturn," said Sanjay Sarathy, SVP of Marketing at Vindicia. "In some ways the downturn makes that growth more important for some merchants. Whether you think about it in context of virtual worlds or online content, the idea of driving customer acquisition and retention is top of the line for vendors these days. It’s not just payment, it’s how to broaden access to customers and get them purchasing over and over again."

While the first announced client of the new CashBox is Custom Builders USA, Vindicia SVP of Marketing Sanjay Sarathy confirmed that the solution is compatible with virtual worlds and online platforms that monetize primarily through sales of virtual goods and currency. Sarathy stated that there were currently CashBox accounts open for virtual worlds but could not at this time disclose the names of individual clients. He expected to be able to announce names of more CashBox clients in upcoming quarters.

"From the Vindicia perspective, we have specifically focused on online merchants that sell intangible services, things that aren’t shipped if you will," said Sarathy. "So we are very focused on the traditional online content world, social networking and gaming, where you need to deal with the intangible nature of what you’re offering to the customer."

"In general our company processes payments for all types of merchants, but that does include virtual goods and other intangibles that call for mass amounts of recurrent billing. There’s a lot done inside the solution to help facilitate payments up front, there are a lot of things that are unique for a recurrent billing merchant," said Kevin Gallagher, General Manaer of the Merchan e-Solutions e-Commerce business. "There are things unique from a payment software standpoint we’ve put into the application itself to let them process as many transactions as possible without getting a lot of rejections or fraud."

The new CashBox solution is configured to support monthly billing, one-time sales of intangibles like virtual goods, and RMT sales of virtual currency. The solution can support freestanding worlds and games, but also social network apps and other apps that are specific to a given platform. Tools included in the CashBox solution make it possible to track amounts of virtual currency currently in the possession of individual users.

Since most virtual goods businesses and virtual worlds by nature end up catering to an international clinetele, Gallagher emphasized CashBox's support of 150 different world currencies as potentially very beneficial to merchants. CashBox will accept some "alternative" non-credit payment types such as PayPal, though which services were accepted would vary by territory.  The solution keeps records of purchases made by individual users, allowing apps to keep track of overall sales figures for individual virtual goods.

"Payment is a very critical part of virtual businesses. It’s very important to pay critical attention to those transactions," said Gallagher.

Vindicia will participate in Live Pitch tomorrow at Engage! Expo, where a company representative will elaborate on the importance of post-transaction data for virtual worlds and virtual good merchants. 

"Part of it is to highlight why merchants, especially virtual world merchants, need to think about acquisition and retention, and how billing can impact that in a meaningful way," said Sarathy. "People think of billing as a back-office operation and few virtual merchants really understand the power of billing and processing when it comes to the acquisition and retention side."

This post by Alicia Ashby previously appeared on our sister site Virtual Goods News.

While the first announced client of the new CashBox is Custom Builders USA, Vindicia SVP of Marketing Sanjay Sarathy confirmed that the solution is compatible with virtual worlds and online platforms that monetize primarily through sales of virtual goods and currency. Sarathy stated that there were currently CashBox accounts open for virtual worlds but could not at this time disclose the names of individual clients. He expected to be able to announce names of more CashBox clients in upcoming quarters.

"From the Vindicia perspective, we have specifically focused on online merchants that sell intangible services, things that aren’t shipped if you will," said Sarathy. "So we are very focused on the traditional online content world, social networking and gaming, where you need to deal with the intangible nature of what you’re offering to the customer."

"In general our company processes payments for all types of merchants, but that does include virtual goods and other intangibles that call for mass amounts of recurrent billing. There’s a lot done inside the solution to help facilitate payments up front, there are a lot of things that are unique for a recurrent billing merchant," said Kevin Gallagher, General Manaer of the Merchan e-Solutions e-Commerce business. "There are things unique from a payment software standpoint we’ve put into the application itself to let them process as many transactions as possible without getting a lot of rejections or fraud."

The new CashBox solution is configured to support monthly billing, one-time sales of intangibles like virtual goods, and RMT sales of virtual currency. The solution can support freestanding worlds and games, but also social network apps and other apps that are specific to a given platform. Tools included in the CashBox solution make it possible to track amounts of virtual currency currently in the possession of individual users.

Since most virtual goods businesses and virtual worlds by nature end up catering to an international clinetele, Gallagher emphasized CashBox's support of 150 different world currencies as potentially very beneficial to merchants. CashBox will accept some "alternative" non-credit payment types such as PayPal, though which services were accepted would vary by territory.  The solution keeps records of purchases made by individual users, allowing apps to keep track of overall sales figures for individual virtual goods.

"Payment is a very critical part of virtual businesses. It’s very important to pay critical attention to those transactions," said Gallagher.

Vindicia will participate in Live Pitch tomorrow at Engage! Expo, where a company representative will elaborate on the importance of post-transaction data for virtual worlds and virtual good merchants. 

"Part of it is to highlight why merchants, especially virtual world merchants, need to think about acquisition and retention, and how billing can impact that in a meaningful way," said Sarathy. "People think of billing as a back-office operation and few virtual merchants really understand the power of billing and processing when it comes to the acquisition and retention side."

This post by Alicia Ashby previously appeared on our sister site Virtual Goods News.