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EBay Acquiring VeriSign Processing for $370 Million
Forum124 was one of the first in a wave of readers to tell us that eBay is acquiring VeriSign's payment processing business for US$370 million. VeriSign will be merged with PayPal and is estimated to generate a 20 percent operating margin which eBay hopes to help offset the recently reported high purchase price of Skype.
Great, all they need to do now is buy Amazon and they'll own half the internet.
From the people who brought you the crazy frog: Secure online payment processing! We deserve your trust!
that micropayments are just around the corner ? Somehow ? Maybe I'm just thinking wishfully here .. :(
This might be the future of VeriSign:
www.paypalwarning.com (notice that this site hasn't been taken down due to libel)
www.paypalsucks.com (ditto)
Habitual VeriSign customers using VeriSign to collect payments may be wise to abandon ship.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
the headline is misleading, very misleading.
which explains why the sum might seem low to some.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
The headline is just plain wrong.
EBay is buying one DIVISION of Verisign, not the whole company.
October 10, 2005
Dear Colleagues,
Today, VeriSign took another step forward on our Journey--this time with a respected technology leader and trusted partner, eBay. VeriSign and eBay have formed a strategic alliance that calls for our two companies to collaborate globally on payment services and security initiatives for e-commerce.
This alliance brings together two leaders in online commerce and security to benefit customers and merchants with greater protection, improved technologies, and more streamlined payment processing.
As part of the alliance, PayPal, an eBay company, will acquire our Payment Gateway assets and combine them with their leading merchant services platform. Additionally, we will provide eBay and PayPal with a suite of security services that includes the deployment of the VeriSign Unified Authentication service and up to one million two-factor authentication tokens to be rolled out in 2006. The deployment of VeriSign Unified Authentication will cut across all eBay companies, and we believe it will constitute the largest consumer authentication deployment in history. Please see the fact sheet for details.
Along with our Payment gateway assets, eBay will also be integrating the majority of our Payment Services employees into PayPal, and will be moving them to eBay's San Jose, California campus. I want to thank all of our Payment Services employees for their hard work and incredible results in building this successful business, and for contributing to a strategic alliance that will support the VeriSign mission to enable and protect all forms of digital interactions over the world's voice and data networks.
Sincerely,
Stratton
EBay is acquiring the payment processing unit of VeriSign. The headline on this story (as of this writing) is HORRIBLY misleading.
Legg Mason analyst Scott Devitt said the deal promises to give PayPal a leg-up in becoming the accepted payment mechanism system on VeriSign's 100,000 or so small business sites.
My experience tells me otherwise. I've been developing small business ecommerce sites for the past 10 years, and on every single development I've been part of we've tried to avoid Paypal integration simply because it puts users off. As I'm based in the UK I've had very little experience of Verisign's payment gateway, but if users have a worse perception of it than they do of Paypal's then I'd be really suprised.
http://twitter.com/onion2k
eBay and PayPal aren't exactly known for instilling confidence in their customer base. This is a slippery slope for Verisign, who issues SSL certs and must by definition be trustworthy.
Skype - Bad Buy...
Versign - Good Buy...
Now is the time for ICANN to take action, if anytime. I don't want another wildcard case from Verisign, tyvm.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
They don't have the money to buy us :o) In your dreams...
Googlezon, on the other hand... that could be sweet.
-- Justin Crites, Amazon.com Software Development Engineer
people don't even read the summaries?
Versign - Bad Guy...
I am trolling
If someone is already habitually doing business with VeriSign, they're accustom to abysmal service, so I doubt this merger will force them to abandon ship.
In my professional geek career, I have yet to met a business that could top VeriSign's ability to cause grief, stress, development delays, and outrageous legal fees.
VeriSign is responsible for the collapse of the last company I worked for. We spent 2 years and hundreds of thousands of dollars designing and developing a retail solution based around a particular domain name. Unfortunately, the CEO fell victim of identity theft before we launched and some a-hole was able to acquire our domain names though ****ing VeriSign.
You'd think we'd be able to get them back easily. We had receipts and we didn't authorize the transfer. But, nooo. They wouldn't cooperate with our lawyers or the California Computer Crimes Task Force. It was SUCH a pain.
And I know I'm not alone on this one. VeriSign is the biggest POS.
I have several, less destructive, examples of being screwed by that company. But I'll spare you for now.
Hopefully, Ebay will make VeriSign slightly less crappy.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
"I've been developing small business ecommerce sites for the past 10 years, and on every single development I've been part of we've tried to avoid Paypal integration simply because it puts users off."
Let's even skip over the bad perception of PayPal, and trusting my money to someone who's ostensibly not a bank, makes no guarantees, isn't backed by the government, and generally is just some dot-com.
But let's put it like this: if an e-commerce site can't afford to just make a contract with a bank to deal with credit-/debit-cards, why should I feel confident in them. We're not talking some starving web-cartoonist taking micro-payments for a living, we're talking a business and trusting them with, say, a few hundred quid for a new PC or a new 20" TFT monitor. Then I'd expect them to, you know, act like a business and inspire some confidence.
If they can't even afford to get some credit-card processing capability, can they even afford a warehouse, or will I get to wait for a month while they order the stuff directly from the manufacturer? Can they even afford employees, then? (E.g., will I have to wait for a month if it's a one man business and the guy is on vacation?) Will they be around next month, if I need support or to file a RMA?
Plus, I suspect for a lot of people it's also a matter of "usability". Yes, I know it doesn't really fit the real definition of "usability", but please bear with me. It's the same idea: making people jump through extra hoops and go through extra web pages just to buy your product is bad. If someone doesn't have a PayPal account, having to go through all those hoops to register a PayPal account, get confirmed, etc, then finally return to get the product they wanted... some may lose interest and go shop somewhere else.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
* IN CNAME ebay.com
look for a job currently. I think I'll just wait till we're down to a handful of companies before starting to look for job again.
Scott McNealy to Michael: "Suck my Sun!" Michael Dell to Scott : "Lick my Dell!"
God could this article be ANY MORE MISLEADING? eBay is buying Verisign Payment Services, which offers software that connects merchant accounts to websites. This represents only 3-4% of Verisign's overall revenues.
Verisign is a MULTI-BILLION DOLLAR COMPANY. What sort of moron would piece together "eBay buys Verisign" from the news reports?! We really need to do something about people doing rapid-fire posts on Slashdot just to see their name / their company's news website in lights. Totally ridiculous.
You DO realize that most Americans are employed by small- and medium-sized businesses, right? If you are only looking for employment at large firms, you are buying into that horrible myth that the Fortune 500 = American Business.
"I think it fits the conventional definition of poor usability rather well actually. The customer has money that they're willing to part with, and they have to fill in extra forms, then wait days, or longer if they don't have online banking, for a Paypal code to appear on their bank statement. It's not exactly user-friendly."
What I meant was that when (or rather "if") most people think of usability, they only think of their own site. Their site is user-friendly, has a cool shopping cart and all, and you surely already have a PayPal account so you only need to click here, right? Even the usability books I've read tended to deal only with what's on your site, and not with such issues as needing paypal accounts, or having signed up with a piss-poor ad provider whose ads take 2 minutes each to load. Or maybe I've just read the wrong books, I guess.
But yeah, once you look at the whole user experience, you're right, it fits the conventional definition of bad usability like a glove.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
eBay you say?
I wonder how many bidders there were in the auction...
CLOSING SOON! Payment processing division of an ENORMOUS leading software company.
Current Bid: US $30,000 (Reserve not met)
Buy It Now price: US $370,000,000
Condition: very good condition
Item Location: Mountain View, CA 94043
Ships to: USA only
Shipping costs: ChUS $39.00 - US Postal Service Priority Mail (within United States)
Please check out my other divisions at http://www.verisign.com/verisign-inc/index.html
Ask me about repetitive DNA
Since I'm evidently too tired to focus properly on the topic, I'll go ahead and add another CSS-related comment, since this seems to be a new symptom afflicting the abandoned-by-/. users of Opera. Now most of the left side links are dead, especially at the top. The overwriting problems aren't as bad as before, so it seems like they're tinkering with it.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
now we have to compete for ssl tickets
Let me be the first to say, "I welcome and bow down to our new Internet eOverlords."
TW
Television is dead. Long live That Weasel Television
EBay doesn't hope that the new purchase will offset the loss from their bad purchase. That wouldn't make sense -- that's done, and it is in the past.
If it is good to by Verisign, they'd buy Verisign, whether or not they bought Skype. Unless buying Skype (and paying too much) was the very thing that allowed them to buy a chunk of Verisign.
The purchase of Skype is what's called a "sunk cost".
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
Well you guys sat back and let this all happen. Let us all rejoice in 2, possibly 3 megacorps owning the entire internet. that's healthy and American. What's wrong with all you commies ? Let us all pray to Google, Ebay and whoever the other one is, Yahoo or whatever. But no. Something is wrong. It's just not American enough.
I know! Let's merge Google with Yahoo and with Ebay and create:
Gayoogle-Bay !
Bow down and worship this beast. Then let's consolidate all the hosts and ISPs into one blob. Then a global currency and lets all stick microchips that track us everywhere into the lining of our rectums.
ooooh it's the future. ooooooh its like coool duuuuuuuude. What's wrong with you
Do analysts ever consider the revenue for the next year when eBay takes over Verisign payments be lower than expected? If I was a merchant, I wouldn't have any ties with Paypal. If I had an account with Verisign, I would be looking for another merchant provider such as Moneris to protect my business.
Paypal doesn't bring any value to those processing credit card payments. I am not saying it because it seems to be the norm these days bashing Paypal, but the fact of the matter is Paypal has conflict of interests everywhere. Merchant providers are supposed to be in favor of the merchant and the bank's credit card business is in the favor of the cardholder. Paypal likes to be bank and provider at the same time.
Lastly, Paypal already offering merchant services. Paypal is simply buying customers to add to their existing clientel. I see a lot of former Verisign merchants leaving.
Not to mention VeriSign owns Jamba!: http://jamba.de/s/dcw/html/about-us_en.html, which produces MAJORLY annoying ringtones and tv commercials to sell them. They try to rip off kids in a way which is actually often illegal (the fine print says you dont actually buy a ringtone, you buy a subscription.. which kids aren't allowed to. etc. that kind of stuff), and annoy the hell out of the rest of us. They operate all over Europe, and according to that link apparently also in North America.
is it just me or is ebay becoming this big black hole and just sucking in everything near it?
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
I am just getting things on my site converted over from when VeriSign bought the last provider I was using.
PayPal better not change a THING about the SDK or interface or web interface, as I don't really care for them and if I have to re-code anything I might as well find someone better.
Anyone know of any good, reliable processing systems for online stores? Perl SDK requred.
I'm sure they'll be sending me an e-mail shortly to update my account settings due to the merger.
"Look out honey, 'cause I'm using technology" -- Search and Destroy -- Iggy Pop
...factual headlines don't draw crowds.
...and that's the way the cookie crumbles.
When I was working at Stream (a tech support outsourcer), in the beginning about three years ago, we had a Verisign call center. That always struck me as kind of odd, because it was the only contract that had to be cut off from the rest of the building, i.e., the others had windows to the "main hall" whereas the Verisign portion you could never quite see what they were doing. I mean, I can understand (kind of...) outsourcing first and perhaps second level customer service for the desktop division of someone like HP (the contract I was on) but outsourcing the primary customer contact for a security company?
They went internal some time afterward from what I heard but I often wonder if we actually just lost the contract to a lower bidder.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
"estimated to generate a 20 percent operating margin which eBay hopes to help offset the recently reported high purchase price of Skype."
Let me see if I understand this. They buy Skype. Then, to help pay for it, they buy something else?
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
"EBay says they'll be moving from the tradition 'VeriSign Garantee' to a rating system for certified sites based on feedback. So if you want to be sure your secure look for 3 blue stars and a smiley face!"
I hear it went for five million kidneys and twelve sandwiches looking like the virgin Mary. Although I can't understand why they bought from VeriSign - they're no A+++++ WILL BUY AGAIN.
You're new here, aren't you.
Dish Network will buy TiVo
Anyhow, the point is, yes, customer service can stink. I'm pretty sure today's model is, "Build a product and hope it works. Throw in a customer service department to keep the idiots happy, and hope they do a good job, and if they don't, push the complaints back to the coders/factory/whatever." The problem with the model is that we can engineer better solutions if we put our minds to it.
I hate call waitin`~+~~~
NO CARRIER
If it's anything like most eBay auctions, it should read:
Buy It Now price: US $39.00
Condition: very good condition
Item Location: Mountain View, CA 94043
Ships to: USA only
Shipping costs: ChUS $370,000,000 - US Postal Service Priority Mail (within United States)
Virgin Mary? eBay got it...miracle Madonna and Baby Jesus painting Go ahead, mod me -1 for crash commercialism with an eBay affliate account.
Software freedom...I love it!
After working for VeriSign for a few years, I can say that their sole money maker in that time was their Payment services product that they bought from Phillipe Courtot (Signio). All of their PKI services and suites were cludgy and proprietary to the point that they were damn near impossible to keep working correctly for any long duration. So, hopefully Stratton can float the rest of VRSN on jamster. My $.02.
I own a small business and recently switched to VeriSign as my credit card processor.
I've actually had a great experience with them so far. They have excellent filters for blocking fraudulent orders (before switching, almost 10% of our orders were fraudulent), and the customer service has been excellent.
The payment services are basically a middle-man to your merchant bank. The customer is sent to VeriSign, they enter their payment information, VeriSign verifies the address, zip code, and CSC (three numbers on the back of the card). If all is well, they send the transaction through to your merchant bank. Your merchant bank then deposits the funds directly into your personal or business account.
Along the way they each take a small chunk of the transaction, and you also have to pay monthly fees to both VeriSign and to your merchant bank.
Taking credit cards in addition to PayPal definitely increased our sales. I can see why they want to merge this with PayPal, making it a much more versatile payment processing solution.
...now they can make even fucking more money off of me everytime i want to sell something! argh!
If I was Verisign, I wouldn't allow to eBay to touch me with a ten-foot pole.
For VeriSign, IP security is still security. They're hiring people to write these things, who want a weekly check (at the very least).* How does VS coax users to pay the wages for them? Simple: call the code their IP and say the cost (and closed-sourceness) is for the "security" of their IP.
Of course, Bush is fighting a war in Iraq for the "security" of their (and our) people, but let's not sketch that tangent line...
*how fitting, to notice Dice ads for "great $programming_language jobs" above the comment.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Just to point out to all the people who keep saying "paypal are not a bank and can confiscate your money without any real reason", if you live in Europe, PayPal cannot do this. To quote the bottom of their page:
PayPal (Europe) Ltd. is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority in the United Kingdom as an electronic money institution. PayPal FSA Register Number: 226056.
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