iPIN has deployed its new payment solution with French ISP Club-Internet as
one of its first ISP partners.
The new technology, which allows the customers to be billed via their
ISP and not by the merchant site, will now be available to Club-Internet’s
300,000 subscribers.
To open an iPIN account, users access a specific site located through the
ISP, and are required to list bank information, e-mail address, and other
details. The information does not need to be repeatedly entered, but is
stored on a secure server, according to Marc Kawam, one of the
founders of iPIN and vice-chairman of iPIN Europe.
iPIN takes a commission on each sale, as does the ISP. The commission is
proportional to the price of the item which is sold.
“If [an item] costs $2, iPIN will take a 15 percent commission on it
whereas for an item which costs $15, the commission will be very low, and
quite similar to the use of a credit card,” says Kawam.
He adds that “neither the merchant partner nor the ISP can check the
banking information of an iPIN account. The ISP does not even know what is
being bought.”
The user can check what was bought on the iPIN area, but not on the bill
that is received at the end of the month. On this bill, the user is only
given the total amount of the month’s combined purchases.
Another interesting aspect of the iPIN solution is that the price is always
displayed in the local currency. For example, a French iPIN user who
purchases an item from the United States will know the
price both in francs and in euros.
In France, iPIN has already enlisted 15 companies as partners of iPIN,
including Le Monde, 00h00, Softissimo, Symantec, Netbeat, Sidaction, and
Buymp3.com. The concept was tested by 15,000 Netizens in France, Belgium,
the UK, Israel and the US.