They didn’t arrive on time, but they did finally come.
Seven days after Interactive Brand Development (IBD) president Gary Spaniak said U.S. webmasters would begin to see payments from the company’s settlement with First Data Bank on their iBill accounts, the wires began to arrive. The First Data payout is $4 million dollars in all, according to Spaniak, who was apologetic for the delay.
“I thoroughly apologize. I’ve been so frustrated, it’s been driving me crazy,” he tells AVNOnline.com. “It’s bad because [First Data] gave us their word and then there was no sense of urgency.”
Apparently, the promptness of the payouts fell victim to bureaucracy. Spaniak said First Data would only release the payout in a lump sum, which had to be approved by several departments within the company.
Krystal Ray, the owner of CamCutie.com, found approximately $4,000 in her account when she woke up this morning, which came as a bit of a surprise.
“It’s been uphill and downhill and uphill and downhill with them, so I’m just glad to see something. I didn’t even expect that,” Ray tells AVNOnline.com.
Other webmasters were reporting the same. First Data isn’t notifying recipients of the payments, just dropping the money into their accounts.
Of course, iBill still owes a lot of people a lot of money and the company has made a number of settlements with webmasters to pay that money. IBD is offering to pay out the remainder of what’s owed over a period of two years or make remuneration through stock options or warrants.
Signs that the troubled company is moving in the right direction are now becoming more apparent. In addition to First Data payments going out, iBill’s European and Gkard services are beginning to look sound.
“As of April 16, all of our European stuff is 100 percent current going forward. There are still people who are owed money, but everyone is being paid current as it’s being billed current,” Spaniak says.
“As of today, 100 percent of everything, including checks, is going through secured, through Gkard secured and is 100 percent secured.”
