NETHERLANDS - Webbilling, a billing website soft-launched several months ago, offers European direct-debit solutions to companies and their webmasters to help them capitalize on a market with low credit-card penetration - approximately 25 percent, by some estimates. A much higher percentage of Europeans possess bank accounts and use them to pay the majority of their other bills. Webbilling.com was launched by European industry veterans.
"Direct debit, the process of withdrawing monies directly from a user's bank account, is presently the most popular, widely accepted payment method in Europe," Michael Reul, senior partner of Webbilling, told AVN Online. "Most Europeans are used to this type of billing because they have the same bank accounts for practically their whole life and it makes rebilling that much easier.
"Other companies offer direct pay to many different countries, but this is a far more laborious method for users and requires the user to physically wire money from their bank account to the merchant. More importantly, there are no rebills, which requires a user to go through the same process every time they execute a transaction. Which will obviously bring down the profit to a minimum for website owners. "
Webbilling has reported that the retention of European direct-debit users is much higher than that of the continent's credit-card users.
"This means our customers are able to get more out of a user because there are no expiration dates for direct debit like there are with credit cards," Reul said, "so they can literally bill the bank account for a lifetime."
Reul said that Webbilling has been in business for more than 10 years and has done processing for all of SexMoney's sites. He said the company's payment services are designed specifically for the adult industry.
"We have maintained a strong, long-lasting relationship with the banks here in Europe," Reul said. "We understand the specific needs of the adult industry, and our service guarantees instant sales, even for unknown or new users. Furthermore, customers will be allowed to set all charges and price points while offering real worldwide billing."
According to Webbilling, the customer has the option of handling all transactions using credit cards and other payment methods, while using direct debit as an additional integrated service without any implementation on the webmaster site. The direct-debit feature is integrated into the customer's system as a white-label solution, so no one will know that Webbilling offers the service and not the company. Webbilling also helps manage the whole direct-debit process for its customers and handles all transactions, from withdrawing money from bank accounts to managing dunning letters (in association with local attorneys) and collections. The customer offers payouts to its clientele and webmasters.
"We also offer the companies the option to retain all their customer data, including payment information, which is then stored in their systems," Reul said. "This frees up our clients to change providers, if need be, while not risking the loss of any data. This puts the power of control in the hands of our clients."
Reul said Webbilling also offers fraud-prevention tools, such as its address-verification requirement and algorithms using account numbers and bank routing numbers. He said the company has a "negative database that goes back 10 years" and requires a secure personal identification number (PIN) with verification.
Webbilling helps facilitate initial and recurring cross-sales, offers free trials and monetizes chargebacks.
"Unlike credit-card billing, there are no penalties for chargebacks because we do not require they stay below 1 percent," Reul said.
Due to the unique SecurePIN feature, a special methods to almos eliminate users fraud, Webbilling.com could already sign up two of the biggest US cam sites.
Webbilling offers its services in Germany, Austria, Spain and the Netherlands, and plans to expand into the United Kingdom in October.
"With the integration of the U.K. into our system," Reul said, "it will free up a lot of U.S. companies to capitalize on the European markets."
