Got a call today from Welcome to UseCash - Now everyone can shop online! telling me about their service, have to say its a clever enough idea, but I have my doubts about its success, these days everyone either has a credit card or knows someone with one. Basically their idea is that when you want to buy something you print out a barcode, take it to your nearest payzone centre, and pay them in cash. Usecash then contact the company, and the product is then shipped. thoughts?

I think there could be a market, but only for things you can't buy off line...

Are they serious? So when I buy something online (the whole point being I don't have to leave the house etc...) I then have to tootle down to the nearest payzone afterprinting out the bar code and pay cash?
Hmmmm....

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How is this better then pay as you go credit cards like 3v.ie ?

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Well it has an advantage over 3v in that you dont have to buy a set voucher and end up with the hassle of having credit left on your voucher, its a little more hassle-free. But edenweb thats a point, who wants to go to the bother of leaving your house if your buying online. I suppose the only advantage is for maybe products aimed at younger people who dont have a credit card.

I can't see the point.

Most online businesses take other methods of payment apart from Credit Cards, so what's the advantage?

If you don't have a credit card you'd probably go for http://www.3v.ie

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Hi. I’m the MD of UseCash. EdenWeb, yes we are serious! I’m sure you go to the local shop every now and then to buy a newspaper, milk etc. So you pay your bill then. The bill is valid for a set period determined by the merchant e.g. 1 hour, 1 day etc. So, no great hardship there.
Lostie, not everyone has a credit card. Adult 18+ pop. Ireland 2.85m. Credit Cards in issue 2.2m, Debit Cards 1.6m. Penetration of credit cards/adult pop. c35% (lots of people out there have more than 1 credit card). So, 1.8m adults don’t have a credit card and 1.2m adults don’t have debit cards. 1.6m internet users of which c500k are shoppers. 25-30% of users will not shop online because of security concerns (real or perceived the net result is the same) so that’s c4-500k. You can always use someone else’s credit or debit card as long as they aren’t maxed out, or aren’t security concerned, or haven’t got fed up being asked…
Blacknight – yes there are other payment options including cheques and money orders but they delay orders because of reliance on post for delivery, manual processing and clearance at the merchant end. Also exposes merchant to cheque/money order fraud. 3V is a very good system but you have to tie-up your money and if there’s a surplus (called ‘breakage’) you have to pay to get a refund…in the form of a cheque (cost and time for you to lodge refund cheque). It’s also quite expensive to load at €5 per top-up.
We look at it this way: Internet shopping is no more than mail order home shopping and the payment options available present a barrier to a lot of people. A cash option completes the options available. If you had a high street shop you’d be mad if you didn’t take cash. Same is now true for websites.

So how will a merchant treat the payment? As a credit card payment or what?

The advantage of 3V is that it's just another credit card payment as far as we are concerned, so we don't need to go messing about with payment gateways etc.,

(and please don't use such a large font when replying - it's really hard on my eyes)

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The merchant gets paid directly into their bank account - EMTS. Straightforward enough. As easy to integrate as any other PSP e.g. PayPal. About messing about...this is all about making internet shopping available to everyone. Use 3V if you like, UseCash if you like. But let everyone shop online. BTW Kombini payments for internet shopping - ie. barcoded bills for offline payment - are the 3rd most popular payment method in Japan and 2nd most popular in Taiwan. So they have a track record. Also, we will be rolling this out into Europe where cc usage for internet shopping in Western and CEE is low. Sorry about your eyes.

hi julescal - i wish you good luck with it and hope it will work out for you, but as we evolved, people are getting lazy and the type of bill paying as u mentioned above are mostly used by pensioners, who doesn't even know how to turn a computer on, never-mind shopping on-line.

In Ireland users are even afraid of using CC on-line, afraid of cloning, due to what they heard which in turn is a lot safer then handing your cc over the counter into a restaurant - all this due to lack of education from the CC issuers.

I dealt and still dealing with on-line payments since the early stages of Internet in Ireland (2000 to be more exact) and I think I have seen it all - there are user that are even afraid of their shadow.

Anyhow, we'll keep an eye on your success and once again good luck with it.

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