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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.
"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.
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.