A year or so ago Linden Lab entered into a business relationship with Dragonfish, the payment processing arm of 888.com, as reported here. Err when did Massively become linked to Joystiq.com? Anyway, I digress, the deal was designed to expand payment options, allow people to pay in local currencies if they’re outside the USA yadda yadda yadda.
This news was then swiftly forgotten as nothing seemed to happen, nothing that is until recently, as observed in a comment on my last blog post where someone points out payment via Paypal is going to be problematic in the future as the payment wiki states that payment via American Express and Paypal is not currently an option.
Concerns about this are raised on this thread on the blogrums and this thread at SLUniverse. The first thing to note here is that the payment wiki I linked to earlier gives an email support address of @888.com, this is why I believe Dragonfish are processing these payments, rather than Linden Lab. Why Dragonfish, or whomever is the payment processing arm of 888.com these days, have a problem with Paypal and American Express I don’t know, I do know that many people have stated that American Express impose high merchant fees for their payments, but give discounts for bulk deals, so maybe that’s the case or maybe it’s the link to online gambling that’s the problem for American Express and Paypal. I don’t know, I do know that the Paypal issue is a problem that is likely to fester though. The really odd thing is that PayPal is a payment option for 888’s online casino sites, so why is not acceptable for Second Life?
However there’s no need to panic just yet and there are some positives in this move, for example if you are paying via VISA or Mastercard you will be able to pay in your local currency, which could save a few pennies here and there as presumably you won’t need to pay foreign currency transaction fees anymore, and you will be able to pay in the following local currencies:
- US Dollars (US$)
- British Pounds (£)
- Canadian Dollars (CAD)
- Danish Krone (DKK)
- Euros (€)
- Japanese Yen (¥)
- Swedish Krone (SEK)
So that gives users more payment options, the complications are going to come from figuring out exchange rates etc. and having your US dollar balance remaining in US dollars, rather than your local currency, so if you need to pay part from the US dollar balance you’ll need calculators at the ready. There’s also the issue that to change your payment info to another card, you need to make a transaction, I’m not sure why you’ll have to do this long term, but short term it makes sense because you’re now doing business with Dragonfish/888 rather than Linden Lab and there would be a right kerfuffle if Linden Lab just handed over all our payment info.
Now the other side of this, these new payment options do not have anything to do with cashing out, you will still be able to cashout via Paypal, even if you are outside the United States, so there’s no need to worry about getting your hands on your cash…. well not yet anyway! Another thing to note is that this new payment process does not impact US residents, their payment processing is not changing and US residents will be able to happily use Paypal to buy Linden dollars and pay tier.
Initially, only new residents will be using the new payment system, or new customers to payment processing, those currently with payment info on file will be using the old payment system, I’m not sure how long for.
So this will be a bit of a bumpy ride for those who use Paypal and it would be helpful if we knew why Paypal wasn’t an option, but for those who prefer dealing in their own local currency, this new payment process provides more options, which is a good thing, right?