[Foundation-l] fund drive, and e-gold revisited

Fri Dec 23 15:56:24 UTC 2005

--- Douglas Jackson <djackson at e-gold.com> wrote:
> About a year ago I proposed on this list that the Board add e-gold as an 
> additional alternative payment option. As I recall, the suggestion was 
> declined, with the comment that e-gold was an "also-ran" payment system.
> 
> I would like to encourage another look. e-gold has continued to advance 
> through 2005, pulling considerably ahead of moneybookers.com [and for 
> that matter, etrade.com and citi.com] in terms of reach and traffic 
> rankings per Alexa. At present, e-gold processes 40,000 to 60,000 Spends 
> (User-to-User transfers) per day, conveying $10 million plus of value. 
> [see http://www.e-gold.com/stats.html ]. Unlike Paypal, Moneybookers, 
> credit cards or any other legacy option, e-gold is truly global and 
> features fees that are a tiny fraction of any other system. For those of 
> you whose life beyond Wiki entails online commerce, I also note that 
> e-gold is unique in that it is absolutely free of chargeback risk with 
> immediate final settlement, worldwide.

Here is what we need: 
1) A service that processes credit cards directly w/o the need to create an account (PayPal
already does that for most countries; more are being added)
2) One that has world-wide acceptance and tens of millions of accounts (again, PayPal fits that
bill)
3) Accepts the major currencies of the world using an easy to use interface (PayPal)
4) Accepts a wide range of other currencies (MoneyBookers does that)
5) Has an interface that is available in several different languages (MoneyBookers and a bit
less-so with PayPal; but they are adding more languages)
6) One that let’s us easily track individual donations and present those to the public (PayPal is
great in that regard; there are also many more other neat PayPal hacks that we could add)

There are dozens, if not hundreds, of other systems we could use. While I’m not completely
satisfied with PayPal (they need to give us a price break; fees in the 4 to 5% range are closer in
value to point-of-sale taxes than normal transaction fees) or MoneyBookers (not the easiest
service to use), I do think that the two together fit our current needs. Thus, IMO, there is no
pressing need to add another payment option at this time. 

The ideal system would combine the ease of use and service of PayPal with the internationalization
of MoneyBookers. So far, it looks like PayPal is moving in the direction of being more
international. I’d even like to get rid of MoneyBookers as a payment option once PayPal becomes as
international as MoneyBookers and they give us a fee break. Keeping things simple has its own
value.

-- mav 

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