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? Continue reading “Enter The Dragon ….. Fish”