Cyphermint Focuses On New Markets For Its Cyphermint Pay Cash System™

Every day new alternative Internet payment systems hit the E-commerce market, poised to give merchants and consumers an easy and secure method to conduct online transactions without using credit cards.

With new alternative payment systems coming out every day and early adopter alternative payment companies like PayPal and CyberCash making their mark in the industry, how do newer companies become recognized and remain competitive? What are the big challenges and where is this market headed?

Cyphermint, an alternative payment company headquartered in Boston, brings its Cyphermint Pay Cash System™ to the forefront of E-commerce. With high-level security, 1024-bit encryption, wide payment ranges, low cost transactions, easy integration, and superb scalability, the product is destined to be a driving force in the alternative Internet payment market.

Product Features

Dan Kline, Eastern Regional Sales Manager with Cyphermint says, “One of the basics of our system is its 1024-bit encryption – a higher level of encryption than what you’d see on a browser-based solution. From the merchant side it eliminates fraud and charge-back, because if a customer doesn’t have funds in that wallet the transaction cannot be completed-it’s a powerful product from the merchant perspective. At the same time, their customers can now have a more secure and comfortable way to do transactions. So, there are two ways to win once people start to use the system.”

But, product features alone will not be enough to keep new alternative payment companies alive in this highly competitive and growing market. As a result, not only are companies focusing on more innovative ways to meet customers’ needs, but they are also introducing their products to new markets.

Markets

As a relatively new company to the alternative Internet payment arena, incorporated in 2000, Cyphermint is tapping into a variety of markets to gain a competitive hold. The company focuses on a number of different markets to expand its reach including people who do not want to “share” personal information, teenagers, merchants with charge-back issues, merchants with intangible products such as software and music, and merchants with retail and Internet tie-in requirements.

Kline explains, “I think our system will be adopted primarily in $5-15 transactions, like online movie tickets, for items where you don’t want to give all your personal information. The teen market is also a huge market because they don’t always have credit cards and if you tie in the person-to-person vehicle of our wallet – well, all of a sudden mom can send her son or daughter at college $100.”

Furthermore, Kline states, “For anybody who is selling content on the web, we’re a terrific system. There again is an issue that if your selling a software that somebody downloads-if you’re selling music, or if you’re selling video streaming, anything of that nature - all of a sudden if someone gives you a fraudulent credit card or someone cancels a transaction, you as the merchant has lost because the customer has the song or video. There’s nothing you can do about it. That’s a prime focus for us.”

The Growing Kiosk Market

While Cyphermint focuses on a number of markets, it is the company’s focus on the kiosk environment that will solidify its hold in the alternative Internet payment market and differentiate it from strong competitors like PayPal.

Kline says, “We’re competing against big players-PayPal just went public. We think they’ve done a great job, but we think we’re different. They have their market; they’re big in auction market, that’s where they’ve had their success. Ours is really moving towards point-of-sale for the store with a kiosk that ties in with the online merchant. That’s how we’re differentiating ourselves.”

Moreover, Kline points out, “The retailer that has a point-of-sale kiosk probably has an online presence and if they’re using our system and customers start to use it in the kiosk environment it can translate right over to the online user as well. That’s really where it all comes together.”

Kline says that when Cyphermint was born, the kiosk arena was recognized as a huge opportunity.

In fact, the Internet kiosk industry is growing very rapidly and will bring a major breakthrough over the next few years. According to a survey published in ‘Kiosk’ magazine, Summit Research Associates predict that kiosks worldwide will reach 300,000. The report says that by 2002, there will be 100,000 kiosks deployed in the U.S. with an additional 200,000 internationally. Furthermore, based on a study by Frost and Sullivan, “the interactive kiosk market is projected to exhibit a compound annual revenue of more than 20 percent from 1999 to 2006.”

Announcement

Clearly, Cyphermint is well positioned in this growing market. And, its position in the kiosk arena will become clearer with a new announcement in the coming weeks.

Kline says that their announcement will focus on their relationship “with a major retailer that is using our system in a kiosk environment. That’s a real big area of our business. The retailer is going to have a cash accepting system where people will put cash into that system and our pay cash system will turn that into an electronic fund. That can now be used to purchase. The kiosk can have different merchants, tickets can be purchased -all kinds of different things can be done at this point-of-sale kiosk.”

Kline admits that it takes time to get into the marketplace and that it’s not without its challenges. But, he says that their new relationship will clarify their role in the kiosk environment and even put them on the map. “We recognize once we get that launched a lot of the other things that we already have in place as far as the merchant area will be recognized.”

According to Kline, “A lot of the challenge is again to start a dialogue, to get people to see how we can do the things for them. Right now, companies have a lot of issues-the economy is part of the challenge, getting a new technology to them is another. Showing them the opportunity and business benefits - at the end of day, that’s my job.”