You would not do this offline, so why should you online?

Cash is king with Ukash

Whilst there has been an explosion of various forms of e-billing in recent years, most of these are powered by plastic and cash still remains the preferred form of money in the eyes of most people: it’s tangible, government backed, and guaranteed to be accepted with a smile at most points of sale throughout the world.

However, despite the public’s love affair with it, cash clearly has some drawbacks: checking in to a hotel or hiring a car can be difficult, and it is clearly not suitable for e-commerce – until now.

Thanks to UK based billing company www.ukash.com, customers can now pay by cash at over 275,000 points in 15 countries in convenient superstore, gas station and convenience store locations in return for a secure and unique 19-digit number which assures payment when it is presented online.

Already operational in several territories around the world including Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Italy, Australia, and the United Kingdom, Ukash has already established itself as a major processing force within the online gaming arena and has recently set its sights on the adult space, allowing webmasters to effectively accept cash from customers in countries where Ukash is already active.

Moreover, since the payment is pre-paid, it is therefore guaranteed free of any chargebacks, allowing webmasters to start reaching this viable and potentially very lucrative market of card adverse customers, which is currently being overlooked by the vast majority of adult websites.

Other USP’s of note include: no registration needed by customers, hence one less barrier for them to start using it and the opportunity to start paying anonymously for content. Furthermore, customers can get change: if the value of the transaction is less than the customer’s Ukash value, they will receive a new Ukash number, value and expiry date.

Since Ukash is regulated by the UK Financial Services Authority, with this regulation passported to the local regulator in all other markets in which it operates, it seeks only to deal with reputable adult web sites that are operated legally and ethically. Moreover, they have an age check in place in their payment process and can introduce webmasters full age verification partners if they lack this functionality on their site.

In an era of increasing online fraud and identity theft, Ukash is proving popular with a growing army of digitally nervous customers: it’s secure and anonymous. Moreover, research has shown that the vast majority of Ukash users already have a bank or credit card, but would prefer not to use them online for precisely these reasons. The company’s strap line says it all: Easy, safe and private online payments for everyone.

Country snapshot : South Korea

Up until fairly recently, this country had no significance in my life whatsoever. Nowadays, my dual-SIM cell phone is made by Samsung, my plasma TV by LG, and my son religiously attends Taekwondo sessions every week, so it certainly features now!

Sometimes referred to as the ‘Land of morning calm’, South Korea is a high income OECD member, having the forth largest economy in Asia, and the 15th largest is the world.

It is home to some 48m people, about 10m of whom live in its capital, Seoul, making it one of the world’s largest cities which is often referred to as the “Tech capital of the world”, with internet speeds of 100Mbits/s as standard. Its fibre-optic broadband network is being upgraded to 1Gps by 2012, leaving the rest of the world in the comparative internet dark ages.

This is also reflected in the country’s internet penetration rate with 76.1% of Koreans having access to it. This makes it the Asia’s most wired country, in stark contrast to its neighbor in the North, whose poor inhabitants really are in said dark ages. Despite this, we have had six sales from North Korea, possibly Kim Jong-il enjoying our decadent wares?

Back in the South, according to “South Korean Payment Card Market”, a recent study from leading research firm RNCOS, average daily use of credit cards in South Korea is projected to grow about 10.5% between 2009 and 2013. Given convenience, tax benefits and perks such as reward points and discounts, credit cards will remain the preferred payment mode in the country in the coming years and the country has become one of the most credit card friendly countries in the world.

In 2008, the use of credit cards increased significantly both in terms of value and volume, as individual customers stepped up their use of credit cards sharply while purchasing goods and services. Daily use of credit cards grew by over 12.5% in 2008 against 2007.

However, as in neighbouring China, the South Korean authorities try to block access foreign porn sites as it steps up its campaign against adult content on the internet. A Herculean task, when one considers its organic growth.

Perhaps for this reason, there are a small army of South Korean’s who prefer the convenience and anonymity of phone billing when paying for access to adult sites. And given their tech-savvy credentials, you can be rest assured that practically everyone there has access to a cell phone. Just remember to communicate with them in Korean. Here’s a start: ‘Get full access with your password’ = 귀하의 비밀번호로 충분히 접속하실 수 있습

Given that this country has such a rich technological culture, I suspect that South Korea will continue to increasingly feature in some way in my life, as I suspect it will in yours.

Country snapshot : Turkey

Often referred to as the country where East meets West, Turkey recently bitterly marked 50 years since its first application to integrate formally with Europe, a date overshadowed by its troubled EU accession talks.

Turkey is home to 75.7m people, 35% of which have access to the fixed line internet at this time. On the other hand, 62.33million Turks, or 83.92% of the population, is a cellphone subscriber - so expect a disproportionate amount of visitors from there via the mobile internet and not from its fixed line cousin.

Although most medium-sized and large companies have websites, they are used mainly for promotion rather than commercial transactions. An exception is banking, where the main incentive is lower costs rather than increased sales.

Credit card penetration there boomed to 44 million as of November last year – up from 34 million in 2007. Meanwhile, there are about 59 million debit cards in circulation, unchanged from back then.

However, the credit-crunch has hit Turkey particularly hard – combined credit card debt has grown to $2 billion as of April this year, and non-performing credit card loans have ballooned to $1.6 billion.

To tackle the debt problem, Government officials announced in June that new regulations would be introduced that would rein in “annual fees on credit cards, minimum payments, and credit card debt”.

In the meantime, we have noticed a significant increase in sales from this market – probably mainly due to the extraordinary popularity in cell phones there. Since Turkey does not have a local pay-per-call infrastructure, surfers are invited to make a regular international call instead. We have revenue-share agreements with telecommunication carriers in the country to which the call is sent.

If you decide to target the Turkish speaking market, do so in their native language of Turkish and bear in mind that a further 1,7million of them live in Europe’s largest market Germany, thus making them the largest ethnic minority based there.

Yes, money talks! But what exactly is premium conferencing?

As we all know, phone conferencing is nothing new. It has been around for years, and there are many companies pushing even more brands in the hope of capturing a slice of this particularly lucrative pie. Applications might include a company that deploys it in order to hold a sales briefing with their remote workforce.

In the UK, such services are typically offered ‘for free’, in return retention of a proportion of the accrued revenues generated by participants calling in to conference.

Premium conferencing, as the name suggests, simply takes that concept one stage further. Participants do not call a 0845 ‘sharecall’ number to take part – rather, they call in on a premium rate number instead.

The conference is hosted by anyone that adds value to the call in order to justify the premium rate element: this could be a celebrity, a sports personality, astrologer, lawyer, or expert in any given field. That person then receives the majority of the accrued revenue – not least since they initiated the calls in the first place.

Such technology can also be used to hold fundraisers: celebrities, for example, could agree to donate a proportion of the funds generated to their favourite charity. Good PR for both the celeb and, for a change, premium rate - and useful money for a worthy cause in the process.

The success of such phone ‘events’ depends on the combination of the perceived value of the cost of the call to the caller together with how the event is marketed.

If such conferencing is to be used in a ‘one-to-many’ format, having a hundred or so callers simultaneously call in means that the ‘open’ conference is out of the question – just one participant with a screaming child in the background would end up ruining the entire event for everyone.

To this end, upon calling, participants are asked if they would like to join the queue for a chance to speak to the host, who can monitor all activity on their conference in realtime via their internet-enabled PC. He or she then talks 1:1 with the first caller, with all others listening in, including those that elected not to be placed in the queue – so audience participation is an option, not a prerequisite.

Alternatively, such technology can be deployed to facilitate ad-hoc ‘one-to-one’ revenue generating value-added phone calls, such as legal advice: the lawyer need not invoice the caller: rather, the caller pays for their counsel on a per-minute basis instead.

Furthermore, since premium rate billing already features in most developed countries, money can be made on a global scale, and not just a national one. Such numbers can be promoted in conjunction with the world’s first truly global medium, the internet, allowing conference hosts to make money from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe.

Country snapshot : USA

Being a Brit, I am proud of the fact that a fellow countryman invented the protocol that has made the World Wide Web possible and de facto was instrumental in facilitating the birth of our industry. Tim Berners-Lee, you rock!

Whilst the Brits might have invented it, it is now the Yanks who undoubtedly dominate the web - as the number of adult affiliate programs based there bear witness. And no prizes for guessing in which country ICANN is headquartered…

As for the numbers, the USA has a population of nearly 309 million souls, of which 72.5 % - about 220m people – have access to the internet at this time. No surprises there then.

The internet might be the world’s first truly global medium, but most US webmasters seem to behave like the world starts in NY an ends at LA, steadfastly sticking to an ‘English only’ sales pitch when trying to lure surfers into their members area. Quite remarkable really, when you consider that the pics and vids we peddle really do say more than a thousand words and need no translation per se.

When it comes to converting US traffic into greenbacks, the credit card remains the best billing mechanism in order to do so – not least since the average American has four of them, apparently.

At this point in my snapshot, I would normally start extolling the virtues of phone billing as an additional source of revenue for webmasters. However, as with mobile, the US is a little different to the rest of the world when it comes to pay-per-call billing. In short : 900 sucks - MCI is the only transit carrier, it does not work with cell phones, and chargebacks are all too common since US consumers are aware that they are not legally obliged to pay that element of their phone bill, and consequently many don’t.

In most of the remaining 194 countries of the world, chargebacks with phone billing are negligible – subscribers either have prepaid mobile accounts, or if surfers call from their regular landline and don’t pay their phone bill they lose an essential utility which just so happens to be the internet’s backbone.

To this end, when chatting to prospective customers, I normally advise them NOT to employ phone billing in the USA since this could cannibalise revenues in the country where the credit card still reigns supreme. We then send such customers a script with the USA disabled so that our geo-targeted payment button does not appear on their join page for surfers surfing there.

When it comes to mobile, the US is also a challenging environment: whilst porn ‘to go’ is making great progress in Europe and elsewhere, in the US Verizon, AT&T and Sprint are steadfastly refusing to spread their collective legs. Yet. And whilst PSMS (premium SMS) can we used for chat,
It cannot be used as a billing mechanism for surfers to gain access to adult websites. Yet.

In conclusion, the USA is a country of paradoxes: On the one hand, it is arguably the most innovative and dynamic nations on the entire planet. And given the fact that most of the world’s top Universities are based there, this situation is unlikely to change any time soon.

On the other hand, it is a country which still has to play catch-up with the rest of the world when it comes to the latest billing and delivery technologies.

But given their talent for said innovation, you can expect them to catch up sooner rather than later.

Country snapshot : Iraq

Of all the territories I have covered so far in my series of ‘snapshots’ outlining the internet and telecoms characteristics of each and every country, Iraq most certainly has the lowest internet penetration so far - a miniscule 1% of it’s 28m population – looks like ‘shock and awe’ did a pretty good job of destroying what little infrastructure they had whilst Saddam still ruled the roost there.

This having been said, to date so far we have paid webmasters a total of $5,781.35 for sales originating in that country. Not a huge number admittedly, but it is not too shabby when one considers that 99% of its population do not even have access to the web at this time. Now that a semblance of normality returns to this stricken country, there is only one way for this market to go and that’s up, up and away!

As for credit card penetration, this mirrors Iraq’s internet one: like most countries in the Middle East, Iraq has long been a cash economy and card ownership there is negligible.

However, one thing that many Iraqis have access to is a phone. Prior to the conflict, 1.2 million Iraqis subscribed to landline telephone service and much of the telecommunication network was centralized in Baghdad. However, many of the network’s switches were damaged during the conflict and service was disrupted.

When it comes to mobile, just like in the former ex USSR countries in Eastern Europe just after the Berlin Wall fell back in 1989, Iraq is essentially starting from scratch. Launched in July 2007, Mobitel Iraq is the first mobile 3G operator there.

Since Iraq has no domestic ‘premium rate’ numbers yet, when a surfer from there calls for a password to enjoy the forbidden fruits of your members’ area, he must make a regular International Direct Dial (IDD) call overseas to get it. Since phone companies worldwide are bound by treaty to terminate each other’s calls, Iraq Telecom must pay a settlement fee to the telco in the country where the call was ‘terminated’. The accrued revenue must therefore be split with two phone companies which is why the payouts are not high (we pay fifty cents per password sold, or eight cents per minute), but this is practically the only way to monetize traffic from Iraq and indeed all countries in that region.

And is case you think that the majority of those 10k passwords we sold in Iraq thus far were to horny soldiers, then you are mistaken: since our default call-to-action in Iraq is in Arabic, about 90% of the transactions made have been in that language. The remaining 10% either had an English browser, or simply took advantage of our ‘revert to English’ feature.

It is safe to assume that this would have been one of ‘our boys’, and I would like to take this opportunity of thanking those of you that use us as a processor in helping make their life whilst serving there just that little bit more bearable!

Country snapshot : Liechtenstein

Sandwiched between Austria and Switzerland with the Swiss Franc as its national currency, Liechtenstein is a tiny micro-state in Western Europe, with a population of some 35,000 people who enjoy one of the world's highest standards of living.

It is one of the few countries in the world with more registered companies than citizens; and it has developed into a prosperous, highly industrialized, free-enterprise economy with a thriving financial services sector — thanks to its low tax/no tax reputation — with the basic personal income tax rate for those that live there being only 1.2 percent.

The secrecy enshrouding its banking sector was blown wide open last year, when disgruntled former bank employee Heinrich Kieber sparked the biggest tax evasion investigation in German history by selling a DVD containing the details of about 2,000 client accounts held with Liechtenstein's LGT Bank for a reported €4.2 million to the German authorities.

The list contained the names of many well-heeled German tax-cheats, including the former boss of Deutsche Post, many of whom then turned themselves in to pay the backdated tax, thus avoiding collecting their 'go to jail' card. Needless to say, Herr Kiebler requested a new identity.

Easy rules of incorporation have created about 75,000 PO Box holding companies that have established nominal offices in Liechtenstein. Such processes provide about 30 percent of Liechtenstein's state revenue. Liechtenstein also generates revenue from the establishment of foundations: financial entities created to increase the privacy of non-resident foreigners' financial holdings. The foundation is registered in the name of a Liechtensteiner, which our CFO rather conveniently just so happens to be.

Liechtenstein is also one of our key "termination" points, the country that surfers from countries like India need to call in order to gain access to your or our member's area. The phone company there has long understood the money-making opportunities afforded by sharing the so-called international 'settlement' it charges to other Telco's, with companies whose marketing efforts initiated the call to Liechtenstein's +423 IDD International Direct Dial access code in the first place.

Liechtenstein is the smallest German-speaking country in the world, with many speaking Swiss German which needs to be broadcast on German TV with subtitles so that the native German audience can understand it!

Since this beautiful alpine hideaway does not have an airport or even a railway station, if you ever decide to visit it you must do so by car or bus. That is, unless you are a whale, in which case you can drop in with your helicopter. Roll on that day...

Country snapshot : Greece

Sometimes referred to as one of the "Club Med" group of countries and now an adopter of the euro, Greece has made headlines in recent months after riots erupted in several cities after police shot dead a teenager in the capital, Athens. The country also has been paralyzed as Greek farmers demand compensation for low commodity prices.

Greece historically has been a country highly in favor of payments in cash. However, prior to the global credit crisis, the banking system went through significant development and growth and encouraged consumers' steady shift toward noncash purchases and payments.

The increasing number of new products, intense competition between banks — which brought about extensive offers in the large credit cards range — the expansion of the network of accepting merchants and the recent technological developments aiming at secure transactions all drove growth of cards. In Greece, credit cards are almost synonymous with debit cards.

Furthermore, the use of the Internet is becoming common, with 3.8 million Greeks, or 35 percent of its 10.7 million population, having access to the Internet. E-commerce is experiencing promising growth, especially among young consumers. But fraud, such as skimming and card cloning, remains a concern in this market.

Greece has a developed pay-per-call market, with call tariffs ranging from €1.42 to €3.55 per minute. OTE, the former state monopoly, is the main player in fixed-line telephony. Since the liberalization of the telecommunications market, OTE has been slowly losing market share to other telecom operators such as Vivodi, Q-Telecom, Tellas and Forthnet. Greece has four mobile telecom companies: Cosmote, Vodafone, TIM and Q-Telecom.

As for what turns them on, the term "Greek love" has long been used to refer to the practice and, in modern times, sometimes is used as slang for anal sex. So you might want to focus on that popular niche if you are to convert your Greek traffic into cash.

But remember that English is not their native language, so communicate with these surfers in Greek. Thankfully, your picture depicting a gaping butt needs no translation per se, and luckily the term "anal" doesn't either. But when it comes to the important bit — paying you — ask them to do so in their language, not yours.

If you operate a paysite, your billing providers should be able to provide you with geo-targeted scripts to help you do this. If not, you should consider switching to those that do.

As webmasters, we all have profited big-time from globalization thanks to the web. With a little time and effort, we take our brands global with relatively ease and, more importantly, make more money from Greece and elsewhere in the process. The world really is our oyster.