Cam sites are hot. It’s estimated that at any given time there are an average of 12,000 cam models online with nearly 250,000 viewers. While the models handle the viewer traffic, it’s the payment processors who handle the risk for merchants. Tuning in to their specialized needs has proven to be successful for Segpay.
Over the last year, Segpay’s cam growth has increased 41 percent and, like cam models themselves, we’ve fueled it with our personalized service. How did we grow that much so quickly? Let me share a little of the Segpay secret sauce.
Cam merchants can get help setting up operating accounts with banking partners, and cam models will soon have tools to help facilitate payouts on their own behalf.
Segpay knows the cam market, because we’ve been studying it for years. We understand the unique challenges cam merchants face that conventional adult businesses do not.
Managing risk is challenge number one and, fortunately, it is our main area of expertise. We’ve put together several offerings on the risk side, such as 3-D-Secure (3DS) authentication (a.k.a. Verified by Visa and Mastercard SecureCode — a tool which has overcome fears of friction and lost sales and, for our merchants is actually increasing conversions while reducing chargebacks substantially).
Also, merchants using 3DS have saved between 2 percent and 7 percent of sales that otherwise may have been declined for fraud. On top of 3DS, cam merchants can set customizable velocity checks on spending limits, geography and/or the age of the consumer. Whitelisting allows “good” consumers to bypass fraud checks, while subjecting the riskiest to merchant authentication.
An additional specialized authentication program allows merchants to set a volume or transaction amount that triggers the consumer to authenticate by validating a small charge on their statement. Automating consumer authentication in this way helps minimize risk for the merchant.
And, a particularly big issue for merchants is conversions. Many of Segpay’s large cam accounts are splitting U.S. and E.U. traffic, routing each through acquiring banks in their geographical region to help bolster approval rates. Offering payment in localized currency boosts rates even further.
Allowing merchants to settle their funds in the currencies paid — dollars to dollars,euros to euros or GBP to GBP — helps avoid currency conversion costs, something merchants appreciate, and most payment processors do not offer.
Post Pay is a new initiative, designed specifically for cam sites and similar services. It allows a merchant to authorize a specific dollar amount up front, which a buying consumer cannot exceed while making smaller purchases on the merchant’s site. Merchants can ensure that a credit card is valid and has the funds available.
After the initial authorization, the merchant tracks how much the consumer has spent on their smaller purchases, and when the consumer is either finished buying or has spent the entire amount authorized, the merchant can capture the total amount and finalize the transaction. Post Pay bundles multiple small payments into a single capture, helping cam merchants limit refund or chargebacks risk by simplifying credit card statements.
Cam merchants can get help setting up operating accounts with banking partners, and cam models will soon have tools to help facilitate payouts on their own behalf. The cam market isn’t going anywhere except up, so we’re intensifying our focus on serving these fast-growing businesses with more offerings on the way.
It took only three years for Cathy Beardsley to turn startup Segpay into a profitable company. As president and CEO, Beardsley oversees the day-to-day operations and long-term strategic planning for the company. Segpay is one of four companies approved by Visa USA to operate as a high-risk internet payment service provider in the U.S. Since 2005, Segpay has offered online merchants a state-of-the-art billing platform that provides realtime payment processing around the globe.
