Sabrina Dent: Freelance web designer, developer and internet marketer living in Cork, Ireland with one dog and a husband in no particular order.
Opening Up Ecommerce: Go&Pay and 3V for the Win
I ran across an interesting service last week that made me sit up and say “wow.” It’s go&pay, an ecommerce tie-in that essentially enables offline payments for online purchases. Simply checkout online, print out your barcoded order and take it to your local Irish post office, cash in hand. They’ll scan it in, take your dosh, and your goods get shipped out from the merchant as per normal.
Granted, I live in a cave, but I’d never heard of this before. They seem to have only a small number of Irish outlets currently, but I predict that as long as the acquisition costs are manageable for retailers, this is one of those stellar ideas that will kick ass on the long tail, for a couple of reasons:
- The internet is in for the win in a recession. Your particular business may fail, sure, but ecommerce transactions will continue to climb year on year.
- An ecommerce economy limited to credit card holders only is, by definition, limited. To maximise sales, you have to open payments as wide as possible.
- In a recession, more people have serious difficulty managing their credit. Cash-enabled systems, especially for price points under the €100 mark, will do more business in a poor economy.
- You may slag off the postal service’s poor delivery of actual post, but there is no more trusted retailer than An Post for payments in Ireland. BillPay just plain works, and has trained consumers well in this kind of transaction.
For all of these reasons, I’m also very hot on 3V, which is up this year for the Net Visionary Innovation Award. (Voting closes on the 17th of October.) 3V is a pre-pay debit card you can top up with a voucher bought at stores like Centra, SPAR and Londis. It is specifically designed for online purchases, and its sheer accessibility has opened up online shopping to an enormous market of the credit poor, the credit averse and the “wtf is credit?” younger shoppers.
And while those of us who are long time users take it for granted because it Just Feckin’ Works, let’s not forget that 3V is in fact terribly innovative:
- 3V uses a top-up system exactly like Pay-As-You-Go mobiles, so it’s familiar and easy to use for 3V’s exact target demographic.
- The PIN code to activate your credit is sent via SMS to your mobile phone, again pitching this service to exactly the right market.
- Your topped up 3V debit card is treated exactly like a standard, bank issued VISA debit or credit card by online merchants, meaning you can use it anywhere that takes VISA.
- Pre-pay eliminates interest rates from credit card purchases and identity theft from online purchases, delivering a benefit to a market segment that may be vulnerable to both.
I’m not affiliated with 3V in any way, but I think this is exactly the right time in the history of the Irish economy to give kudos to a successful, innovative product that has had real impact in Irish ecommerce, and I invite you to drop by the Net Visionary Awards voting form and cast your vote for 3V.
While you’re there, of course, you could also drop in your votes for Pat Phelan or Deb Hadley for Best Business Blogger, and Twitterfone.com for Mobile Internet Innovation, but since I am affiliated with both Pat and Deb, I prefer for be a little less transparent in my pimping there.
In any case, go forth and vote – and good luck on the night to all the short listees. Have a grand evening!
13 Oct 2008
| In: Ireland + Technology |
Love the 3V product and used to sell it in my stores, I think there is one major problem though, if you require a €50 top up the store charges you €55
13.10.2008, 9:36 amThis is pretty ok for large amounts but its 5% if you just want €100
probably not explaining myself well having re-read this
this store charges you €5 every time you load this virtual card no matter how much you load it with.
No, I understand you perfectly. They have actually addressed that issue now. If you add €20, it’s FREE. If you add 20 – €100, it’s €2.50. If you add over €100, it’s the €5 from the old days. I think that’s quite reasonable myself.
Love the go&pay idea – one for Curious maybe?
13.10.2008, 4:15 pm3v is not a bad idea it’s just not quite right yet.
We used to do it in AREA51 and it created some savage problems in there. We were one of only a handful of shops in Cork prepared to do it and I pulled it about 4 months ago.
We did a massive ammount of it, over 6 figures.
I had a bit of a scrap with the 3V guys about the problems we face in the shop not to mention the fact that we are carrying so much cash that is not ours, which carries alot of headaches. My main problem was that we made €1.24 on every topup. Now some people might think this sounds good, €1.24 for doing nothing apart from pressing a button.
16.10.2008, 10:48 pmBut here’s the catch, money costs. For me a business to lodge cash into my bank it costs 1 euro for every 300 in notes and 1 euro for every 100 in coin.
So now someone comes into AREA51 and says Sam can I have 320 on my card please as I’m booking a flight, I’m like sure thing, that will be 325 please. Now a bit more small talk while I wait for it to print out, “Shite weather ,yea blaa blaa” Once it’s printed I hand over the slip and now off he goes happy out, and I head to the bank to lodge the money and collect my commission. There you go mr bank manager there is 325 in NOTES “thanks Sam, oh by the way I just charged you €1.00 for that so here is your 24 cent left over, enjoy.”
So as you can imagine if you get a mix of coin as well it’s a waste of time and effort and just adds stress and worry to a business for feck all return.
Nice idea but way off the mark, and don’t even get me started on the customer support and the whole problem with not being able to top up amounts and loads of other problems. 3V should win biggest pain the the hole award!
RANT part 2
17.10.2008, 2:44 pmThe example I was ment to use was if someone tops with 350, which happens alot as people use it alot for booking flights. By the time I get to lodging this cash it has cost the shop 0.01c.
Sounds like a great deal for a shop. NOT!
I’m late to this – somehow missed it before. I use 3v because I have buried my credit card – I’m just not safe with it!
While I take your point on the commission Sam, using the card means I now quite often go to a shop I previously never went into, and invariably buy other things in it while I am there.
I shop there quite often now even when I’m but buying 3v credit, because it’s on my radar and familiar. So they may not make much from my 3v purchases, but they’ve gained a fairly regular customer. That’s not nothing.
21.10.2008, 10:21 pm