An iBill representative told XBiz that the company had had problems with the service in the past and might some day bring it back, but that at the moment it was no longer being offered to new customers.
For current iBill clients, the service will be terminated on March 15, and the last day to use it will be March 14. Once the service is officially disabled, there will no longer be access to the cart manager, the company said, and customers will receive an error page.
"IBill regrets any inconvenience caused by the termination of its Catalog Shopping Cart service,” the notice stated.
IBill’s announcement sent a ripple of concern throughout the webmaster community, forcing some to switch to other billing services that could better accommodate their tangible product sales.
On the heels of downsizing its office space by moving to a new location in Deerfield Beach, Fla., the company also is facing a new slew of lawsuits for alleged nonpayment.
Four additional adult companies represented by attorney Michael D. Stewart are suing the payment processor for failure to pay and breach of contract.
Among the adult companies that have so far succeeded in suing iBill for back payments, Cybersocket won a victory against the payment processor in February of last year based on two claims for nonpayment of advertising.
IBill’s troubles began in 2004 when credit card processor First Data dropped iBill from its merchant account. IBill tried to secure another merchant account holder and, according to some, failed to tell its clients. Webmasters were frustrated in their attempts to contact the Florida company, which until then had been one of the top IPSPs along with CCBill and Paycom.