One of the UK's biggest providers of e-commerce web shops has teamed up with a company pioneering an offline payment system in a bid to tackle online fraud. Internet Retailer has partnered with PayOffline to eliminate the risk of fraud and enable internet merchants to accept orders from customers who prefer to pay in their local high street.

Supported by the Alliance and Leicester, PayOffline is a payment platform enabling customers to buy goods and services online without credit cards and pay by cash or debit card offline at any high street Payzone outlet. David Geran, chief executive at Internet Retailer, said: "Gaining customer confidence and trust are paramount to achieving online success. "By enabling our shop keepers to offer PayOffline to their customers, they can offer peace of mind and security as well as extend the reach of their e-commerce web shops to a whole new market of cautious internet users."

Online shopping hit record levels in July 2007 as sales soared to ?4.2bn from ?2.34bn in July 2006, according to the Interactive Media in Retail Group. However, a report by the Office of Fair Trading suggested that 79 per cent of web users are still 'very concerned' about the security of their payment details when shopping online. An estimated 3.4 million internet users avoid e-commerce websites and are willing to miss out on potential savings because of "a lack of trust or fears about personal security".

Over 15 million homes in the UK, some 61 per cent, now have an internet connection, and 53 per cent of internet users surveyed by National Statistics Online have bought goods online.

Any payment system that can offer a more secure shopping experience for online buyers has to worth thinking about.

Kate

That sounds really interesting Kate, i may startr looking into this a bit further. You could attract a whole new market

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Childrens Fancy Dress Costumes and Party Dresses
Childrens Costumes and Dancewear

I just looked this up when I googled it
http://www.goandpay.com/index.php?page=merchants
unless they are the same company doesn't look like it is quite the pioneering thing they are saying it is, I found several others also.
Anyway whay concerns me is the customer has to print off the invoice and take it to the paypoint within so many days.Now it doesn't state the cut off date but this could be open to abuse.You coul dhave people filling their carts and opting for this method and never ever paying for anything
Might give it a miss I think

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Childrens Fancy Dress Costumes and Party Dresses
Childrens Costumes and Dancewear

There are loads of people who won't pay online though, and they won't all be non payers, I wonder if the risks of a non payer would be outweighed by the extra sales generated.

If you have lots of the same product and aren't using it on a site where you have to pay for each sale e.g. an auction site then it may be worth signing up for, but if you sell one offs or have to pay for your listings/sales then could become a real pain.

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Lawrence

But if you have say only a few of a certain item and someone purchases them via this method then doesn't pay, it means they are unavailable to anyone else and you are losing possible sales. I woul dimagine this only working really well if you are offering a service which you don't provide until payment is made, or goods made to order or you have huge volumns of stock.

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Childrens Fancy Dress Costumes and Party Dresses
Childrens Costumes and Dancewear

Hi there,

FYI, PayOffline has mechanisms in place to help merchants deal with non payment.

Merchants can set an expiry date for orders, a callback and email message are sent to the merchant to inform them of order expiration. A callback processing script on the merchant server could be designed to re-stock products when an order expiration callback message is received from PayOffline.

It is also possible to specify a notification period (x). If payment has not been received x days before the order is set to expire, a callback and email are sent to the merchant. This allows merchants who have captured the customers email address to send a payment reminder email to them.

One of the demographics PayOffline is targeted at are the millions of people who do not have a debit or credit card. A large percentage of these people are already paying their utility bills and topping up their mobiles at payment outlets, we are simply enabling them to pay for their online shopping in the same way.

With Kind Regards,
PayOffline

Hello
are you the same as pay&go? Only asking as I sent them an enquiry for their terms etc.
I am still pondering on this one, not sure how straightforward it is to integrate in my website at them moment. I tried to enable cheques the other day and nothing happened
I agree though it is a very good idea and I have seen paypoints in lots of places localy too.

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Childrens Fancy Dress Costumes and Party Dresses
Childrens Costumes and Dancewear

The system looks very interesting and integration into existing websites looks like simplicity itself. Also being backed by the Alliance & Leicester gives it a lot of credibility.

I think it's definitely worth considering as a payment system for your site, though it depends on the number of users it's likely to have.

What are your marketing plans for it? Are you going to have a national TV, radio and newspaper etc campaign?

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Lawrence

Dear Tinkerbell,

We are not pay&go (go&pay).

We are easy to integrate, we have no sign up fees, set up fees or recurring fees. There is no sign up required by the customer or any additional charges imposed on the customer for using our service.

PayOffline is the perfect substitute for cheque and postal order payments. From the merchants point of view, orders placed via PayOffline can be completed a lot quicker than with orders paid by cheque.

The payzone network is a growing network, there are currently over 17,000 participating payzone outlets and this number is set to grow.

Dear Lawrence,

We fully appreciate the importance of consumer awareness. Our current focus has been geared towards merchants as it's imperative that we have a wide range of merchants with a wide range of products/services offering PayOffline before we do any type of consumer advertising.

PayOffline will be doing an online and offline advertising campaign targeted specifically at consumers. Unfortunately we cant give away any more information about our consumer ad campaign at this point in time. We can say that you will be hearing a lot more about PayOffline in the future though.

Thank you for your interest in PayOffline.

With Kind Regards,
PayOffline

could someone pm me with some more info please or send me an email?
I would be interested to look further into this. If its easy to intergrate thats half the battle.

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Childrens Fancy Dress Costumes and Party Dresses
Childrens Costumes and Dancewear

Why not just look at their website? It contains far more information than an email ever will.

Welcome to PayOffline

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Lawrence

Thanks Lawrence! When I tried to google them I came up with someone totally different before so assumed they didn't have one yet. I must have mistyped something in the search box, shall take a look in the morning.

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Childrens Fancy Dress Costumes and Party Dresses
Childrens Costumes and Dancewear

Blush, have you had a look yet? I had a quick look. Zen isn't one of its already integrated shoping carts, and it points you to web developers to help you integrate it.

Well that rules me out then. Sorry but I am not in a position to pay out to web developers to add something that isn't essential. I shall wait until someone crates a mod for it. If it proves to be popular no doubt someone will. Never mind

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Childrens Fancy Dress Costumes and Party Dresses
Childrens Costumes and Dancewear

Dear Tinkerbell,

FYI, a module is being created for ZenCart, it should be ready in a couple of weeks. It will also be free of charge.

With Kind Regards,
PayOffline

Thanks for that information, please keep us updated. I shall look into it in more detail then. It may prove to be quite a good thing to have on my site as another payment option.

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Childrens Fancy Dress Costumes and Party Dresses
Childrens Costumes and Dancewear

Hi There,

Just to let you know that a Zen Cart module is now available for PayOffline.
Please visit the link below for more information:
http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=79058

With Kind regards,
PayOffline