IBill news

From IBill CMI:

September 29, 2004 iBill Clients: Please know that paying our clients is our highest priority. iBill is continuing to negotiate the release of settlement funds being withheld by First Data in order to pay our clients. In addition to our continued negotiations with First Data, we are working on freeing up additional capital to speed up the remittance of past due payments to our clients.

As you all know, we have been working through the difficult issue of transitioning our domestic IPSP business to our new domestic merchant bank at a pace that was faster than what was initially proposed or had been planned. In order to ensure proper compliance for our US sponsored merchants we will not be accepting Visa transactions until each US sponsored merchant has completed their new iBill merchant agreement with our new domestic bank. All US clients will continue to have the ability to offer MasterCard, Discover, JCB, American Express, Online checks, Web 900 and WebPhone. iBill account managers will have agreements available on Friday, October 1st. Planned implementation is scheduled for as early as Friday, October 8th.

To further clarify, iBill EU clients are not affected by this and will continue to process Visa without interruption.

Going forward, iBill will continue to operate under three business models:

1) iBill Direct US. iBill has an agreement with a domestic association-registered party. This involves processing and settling with a domestic bank. In this model, iBill will sponsor and accept the risk on behalf of our clients. Not only will clients have the ability to take advantage of the iBill products and services that they know today – 24X7 customer service, risk management, RevShare affiliate program, and password management – but, they will now be funded directly by the bank and will have the option to be funded daily. We are extremely excited about this program and feel that it puts us steps ahead of our competition.

2) iBill EU. iBill will continue its current processing relationship in the EU. The program services remain the same and will continue to be expanded. We are also moving forward with establishing a direct merchant relationship with our EU processor and bank. This option will be similar to iBill Direct US, which allows for direct funding from the bank.

3) Asia-Pacific Merchant. iBill has established a merchant relationship in the Asia-Pacific region. More details to follow next week.

We appreciate all of the support that our clients have given us over the last few days. We know how serious this matter is to you. Please be assured that everyone here at iBill is working diligently to correct these matters so that we can all return to business as usual.

Sincerely,
Your iBill Team

For more information regarding iBill US Direct please contact our sales team at Sales@iBill.com

How does this affect one's bottom line? Well, I have a site that gets on average 25 signups/day.

Today? -1. That's right. -1. One signup. Two check refunds.

Last week during their whole mess with the court action? 5 signups for those 2 days.

On a site with average 25/day. Coincidence? I think not.

Yes, we all sure would like IBill to stay around. Processor company options are good for the industry. Having IBill around is, in theory, good for the industry. But if they keep screwin' up, they have no divine right to stick around. Your business screws up, you go outta business. It's that way for all of us.

And screwup after screwup after screwup doesn't get forgiven or overlooked simply because no one wants to see IBill go.

I just have a great deal of trouble understanding how they could have known First Data didn't want to renew their contract months and months and months ago and yet here we are at the time it's finally happened with withheld payments (for periods that shouldn't even have been affected! They're withholding payments on money earned prior to all this. Have they no money in the bank? Are they living paycheck to paycheck over there?) and no Visa processing for a week and spotty transactions last week and excuse after excuse.

Bums me out and ticks me off further cuz I know there are some good people at IBill. The guys I've gone to for cust. service issues there in the past have really gone outta their way to help me out and seemed to really care about my business. And they're getting screwed here too. Probably having to deal with a lot of irate clients and even, worst case scenario, having their job security placed at risk by some bad decisions and neglect from some higher ups.

Just because the industry would be better off with more processors doesn't mean shoddy ones do anyone any good.

This is a scary time. The press releases all sound good and hopeful, but I have seen the same words or simliar to them come out of the press releases from other processors, shortly before they collapsed.

I try to think sometimes that there are industry giants that will be around no matter what. Guess I just found out there is no santa either.....

It's hard enough in this business to make a buck these days, without having to worry all the time if you are actually going to get that buck 2 weeks later.

had someone say this to me on icq

"if we wanted to be with Netbilling we would have already signed up with Mitch. It sounds like we are going to get our own merchant accounts but have to pay the full Ibill price. Plus, we have to hope we get paid on our old transactions, since the financials from when you were public, show that there are not enough funds to cover your debts to the webmasters."

I think it's irresponsible to know for months that you might not be able to provide a service to your clients and not let them know of that possibility.

Being the Visa victim is B.S. If they gave a rats ass about the thousands of people, and their families, that they do business with, they would have said something. I'm sure they've been in negotiations forever regarding their new account.. according to Forbes Magazine it's been a nightmare for them... but if they cared in the least bit about their customers... things would have been done differently.

The sad thing is.. every other billing company out there in existence.. will do the same if/when their time comes. It's all a part of maximizing profit and minimizing losses. It's business as usual for them and when their doors close they will disappear along with millions of dollars due their customers... us.. the people who work our asses off and have up to 15% taken by these companies.

Quote:

---

Originally posted by Squirt
The sad thing is.. every other billing company out there in existence.. will do the same if/when their time comes. It's all a part of maximizing profit and minimizing losses. It's business as usual for them and when their doors close they will disappear along with millions of dollars due their customers... us.. the people who work our asses off and have up to 15% taken by these companies.

---

The even sadder thing is that many of those companies will not even acknowledge things like this happen and, unfortunately, i do beleive what you said is true :(

Regards,

Lee