The phrase “Content is King” is pretty old but frequently used in the adult industry, where content is the core of the entire industry.
It’s said that Sumner Redstone originally coined the phrase. His family is majority owners of CBS, Viacom, MTV, Paramount Pictures (and more). Bill Gates is often credited with first using the phrase “Content is King” in a 1996 essay even though Redstone precedes it. Additionally, the 1974 book “Magazine Editing and Production” seems to pre-date both of those. To quote the Gates essay, “Content is where I expect much of the real money will be made on the internet, just as it was in broadcasting.”
Sure, it’s possible to make the payment process feel a lot less invasive than your recent prostate exam. However, not providing all of the information and just doing ‘the basics’ causes risk to skyrocket.
It seems that every time someone claims themselves to be the “king of the hill” on most anything, there’s always a counterargument as to why something else is more important. And the only problem with claiming that “Content is King” is that without a way to monetize content, it has little to no value. That means advertisers in media, newspapers and broadcasting for example.
On the web, where MobiusPay is a leader in electronic payments, it means content on the internet has a symbiotic relationship to payments. Without money being made, there is no content and without content, there’s no money to be made. That means your website needs its payment flow to be as good as possible for your target market. You can have the greatest content in the world on your website, but without an equally impressive payment flow, that content may not make you the revenue you expect.
Oftentimes, it seems most important to pile as much information as possible onto the payment page, but this is not optimal and will sink your sales. While it’s important to ensure that you are informing buyers of monthly billing cycles, your refund policy and even the company name that will appear on their credit card statement, do it as cleanly and as simple as possible. While we want our merchants to be as upfront and trustworthy with their customers as possible, there is such a thing as overkill.
Customers believe the payment experience should be easy and simple. Amazon patented their “one click” solution because it makes mountains more money than going through multiple steps. From the customer’s perspective, the less information you need to collect from them, the better.
With new GDRP regulation in the E.U. affecting not just businesses in Europe but around the world, protecting your user’s data could be as easy as not collecting it in the first place. Plus, it might just help your sales. From a merchant’s point of view this could be downright dangerous. Sure, it’s possible to make the payment process feel a lot less invasive than your recent prostate exam. However, not providing all of the information and just doing “the basics” causes risk to skyrocket. Much like ignoring the “check engine” light on your car or avoiding the cold finger of your favorite doctor, bad things can start to happen, and it could be fatal to your business. Chargebacks can creep in and escalate when you’re not collecting the basic information that helps to avoid fraud in the first place.
Multiple points of confirmation help prevent fraud, including full address verification system confirmation (AVS) and usage of the card verification value (CVV) on the back of the card. Settling your transactions within 24 hours or receiving authorization will help the merchant get the lowest possible rate and not experience unnecessary downgrades. Providing all the usual major points of data with your authorization requests is critical to mitigating risk, even though it might make your customers groan. Typing with one hand can be difficult.
Today’s internet is subscription- and freemium-based. We expect the growth of subscription-based websites to grow significantly thanks to advertising killers such as AdBlockPlus. While it might seem backwards to the entitled mindset of the youngest generation of website visitors, people are very open to paying for the services they love, especially if there is a community aspect. Freemium services are more popular than ever, allowing everyone to use a service for free and a small percentage of people to pay more for bonuses and extras. These freemium products take full advantage of avoiding the painful process of entering card information each time a purchase is made. Because the transactions are usually pretty small, they rely entirely on placing a card once and forgetting about it. Clicking “skip” for a fee on that game level you just cannot beat has a tiny price tag, and if you were always putting your card in to do it you would think twice every time.
If you want to break down the barriers and unlock the path to rebilling nirvana, its time for the MobiusPay Card Vault. Merchants can now allow their customers to enter their credit card details, and charge the card in varying amounts at any time. This is perfect for routine monthly rebilling cycles, but it unlocks infinite payment possibilities! You can use this same billing technique for freemium upgrades for web services, in-game purchases or cool upgrades, or even seamlessly allow the purchase of tokens for webcams.
Jonathan Corona has more than a decade of experience in the electronic payments processing industry. As MobiusPay’s VP of Compliance, Corona is primarily responsible for day-to-day operations as well as reviewing and advising merchants on a multitude of compliance standards set forth by the card associations. MobiusPay specializes in high-risk merchant accounts in the U.S., E.U. and Asia. Twitter @MobiusPay
