Accepting RL Credit Cards in SL Vendors?

How many vendors and sellers out there are interested in accepting RL credit cards to sell their wares?

I have a system to accept credit cards (all RL credit card info is sent and protected by PayPal), and I'd like to gauge interest in the idea. If a % charge is made to the vendor, that money is given to the consumer in the form of a rebate. I currently (and many L$ exchangers do the same) don't allow people under 2-weeks old to withdraw cash from my ATMs. I'll be upping the age to 4-week olds in the near future. However, if someone redeems their L$ at a vendor using this system, even a 1-day old newbie can buy L$ with RL Credit Cards.

Just to clarify: there is no entry of RL Credit Card or PayPal information inworld. Period. There is no SL<=>RL communication going on. Your RL Credit Card information is typed in via PayPal in your own RL webbrowser via a SSL connection. I never see any of that information.

I assume if this can be done it could also be done to pay for anything in SL. I like the idea buy consumers may be wary of using a credit card in game.

Just to clarify: all financial information is between you and PayPal (a major credit merchant). I never see ANY financial information whatsoever. You give your financial information to PayPal (either through a PayPal account or just your Credit Card info) through a SSL web connection, and then PayPal tells me that you paid a certain amount of money. That's it.

I do, however see RL name and email information, which I keep strictly confidential.

One of these SL-related services, I can't tell which one, put something called TROJAN BANKFRAUD on to my computer in the last week. Since these SL-related sites selling currency are the only sites I bought from in the last week, it is related to SL, and nothing else. TROJAN BANKFRAUD is not caught by Norton, but by another A-V program. It contributed to paralyzing my computer for 2 days -- don't know if they are also the ones sending me LSASS.exe attacks too. I don't know what the point is. I guess these services have been ripped off so many times that they take overprotective measures. I personally would not want to deal in any large amount on any of these websites because people can get very vicious in SL, especially if they are on some jihad related to forum flame wars or if they believe you have somehow wronged them. I personally keep a neutral credit card that is not something people can use to harass me in RL.

I hope you aren't suggesting that I've done that. My site is very simple, and contains no viral component whatsoever.

I have never ripped anyone off, EVER. I have never been vicious or launched a "jihad" against anyone.

All credit card information is given to PayPal. I never see any Credit Card information. NEVER.

Hank is nicer than Baby Jesus ;0

I trust Hank enough to consider his system as a payment system for map services I'm working to provide the cummunity, naturally I'll still accept the all mighty L but... his system offers a viable method for direct USD sales, something I do want to offer.
Sure beats IGE or Anshe ^.^

The only reason I am saying no to this is because I think it takes away from the "SL is a fantasy world" sort of thing.

Once you pay real money (and I understand that people are paying real money now, but it's not as, well, DIRECT) for a piece of digitalized clothing -- I don't know. Sounds a bit too close to the real world for me.

I do not think that stores with these vendors would sell very much. I know I would be unwilling to use such a vendor.

Vald Points Lo. Thanks for the feedback!

I've been aprehensive about the whole USD <-> L$ conversion thing, but its turned out "ok".

However doing direct transfers of USD for virtual items, reminds me of There, and worries me of creating more inflation than possibly happening now.

I personaly would not use it, as I've never been big on the idea of USD for virtual items, and I wouldn't use a vendor either for people to pay with any of my items for USD.

I also would hate to see L$ priced items become a rarity.

A valid point, but LL itself has put value to the Linden, something There did as well, but There doesn't have as much user content, certainly not in as sane a fashion as we do.

Honestly if I didn't get L$ from Hank, I'd be hurt, I may actually need them inworld for something.

Oh Jesus Christ on a crutch. Now Hank is Im'ing me in the game and threatening me, saying "slander will get you nowhere," and accusing me of slandering him.

Did I say YOUR site had viruses and harvested information for malicious purposes, Hank? No, I did not. Do you have a guilty conscience?

SOME site, related to SL, one of several I deal with, put these trojans on me. And it is not the first time. And I also had an LSASS.exe attack. I haven't used any other pay sites or even read any news sites as it happened so I am attributing this to an SL-related site. It happens. It is a generic risk of Internet business, especially this very dicey virtual world business. It is a generic discussion about these risks and a prod to get those providing these services to tell us what protections they put in, and how they use the information. If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.

If you haven't been vicious and haven't launched a jihad, well, I guess we have nothing to worry about? But your prickliness in having this very normal discussion in which people put forward their very normal experiences for normal discussion is really opening up more questions than it answers. So don't do that, Hank, if you expect to provide a risky Internet-related business in a virtual world.

Hijacking my thread about some mysterious service doing this nasty thing to you is the same thing as accusing my service of doing that to you.

I'm sorry some scumbag did it to you. Please start a thread accusing all the people you've had contact with about infecting your computer, launching attacks against you, and what not. But please don't hijack my thread asking people's opinions about accepting RL credit cards. It's offtopic.

Oh, excuse me for hijacking your INFOMERCIAL DISGUISED AS A POLL.

If this is a thread really investigating whether people are willing to give out their RL credit cards to others in this game, and not just about your own business, well, I've stayed in topic. I've pointed out that in using these services in the last week, I found that some one of them put trojans on me and I also experienced computer viruses. Well, like I said, it happens. That's not off-topic, it is relevant to this discussion. Are people willing to use RL credit cards as much as they would on the Internet? Well, yes and no. Some have said no, because they want a fantasy world intact and sequestered from real life. And I'm sayinng I'm 100 percent more cautious than I used to, because I see that in TSO, companies become heavily overprotective due to scams and they start injecting things that themselves become a problem, like trojans fighting bank fraud or whatever the hell that trojan is. And because it is a virtual world with all kinds of wars and fantasies going awry in it, including people's fantasies of being huge monopolists and oligarchs LOL, it also has more liklihood of the Internet financial transaction become a venue for revenge or griefing, far more than an ordinary payment to an ordinary Amazon.com or something.

Once again, you folks at the inner core need to GET OVER YOURSELVES. You are just ordinary people offering an ordinary service, and customers and consumers are entitled to ask pointed questions especially given the risk involved.

That's quite interesting coming from someone whose sig line is an ad.

Yup, someone disagrees with your inane, off topic ranting and they must be inner core. Psycho.



Hank, I chose the 1% charge with no liabilty for chargebacks. I would have no qualms about paying the 1%, but, due to all the horror stories I have been hearing about PayPal and chargebacks, I am a bit leery about accepting that liabilty.

Yeah, isn't it? Because everybody who is interested in trying to sell something puts an ad in their signature. I never did it for months until I wised up noticing that Anshe Chung and Jauani Wu and all the better land barons did it. So, if you are selling something, why don't you try it Nolan? What were your sales last week? This week? This year?

Hey, I don't have an issue with the use of sig lines as billboards, not in the least. What I do have an issue with is when those who accuse others of certain advertising practices have sig line ads.

I see cognitive dissonance in your railing against the "FIC" and having a sig line ad. One you say is inspired by land barons. You're making progress "son". Soon you will be fully feted. Whom will you label then? Whom will you point fingers at then for the imagined problems of yourself and newer players?

Feted is as feted does, sir. Keep this up and we'll let you come visit the treehouse. Maybe we will even demonstrate our secret skull & bones handshake for you.

No no no no NOOO NOT the handshake...



<back on topic>

What is it with <edited> always assuming the rest of the world is <edited> too? For example, install just about any program nowadays and the country selection defaults to <edited>. There are world standards for just about everything, but <edited> ignore them and use their own.

Why am I complaining? Because it is spreading into SL. Why should I want to buy things in SL using US$? I don't have any US$ I use Pounds Sterling.

We already have a currency in SL, it is accepted everywhere in SL. Why would you want to add a different one?

If all you are doing is enabling Credit Cards in your atms as a direct currency exchange, then fair enough. But buying a L$50 item of clothing with a CC?? Are you kidding?

Uhh, Hank takes Pounds and Euros, as for directly buying a 50L$ item... Gee I hope not, that becomes unprofitable after credit processing fees.

This system will never be implemented.

The banks refuse to deal with anyone not operating over SSL and with their minimum setup of computers, which include a seperate database machine, seperate web machine and seperate firewall. You need all thre at least before they'll take credit card numbers off you. And there's no way to get data out of SL over SSL so no chance.

Secondly, there's no way to extend a third party's site like PayPal into SL, short of having people tap in their PayPal username and password, which they'd have to be stupid to do.

I think the best option is a prim in world that you click on, that pops up someone's custom "Pay my paypal account" window when they click. This would be the best, and smartest way to achieve this type of integration. If your PayPal intant payment notification URL sent xml-rpc into the game as soon as your transaction was done, it would be merely a second or second and a half slower than taking cards in world.

I'd have to agree with Lo on this one. The best analogy that comes to mind is some "no cash" resorts that use "exchange beads" as a proxy for cash - it must augment the experience or they likely wouldn't do it. Not to mention typing a 16 digit number, plus expiration, plus name, address and that code number thingy in-game would be onerous, and a little imprudent.

This is *not* to disparage Hank's current services of which I've heard nothing but good things (but haven't had cause to use myself).

As a PHP hack-coder and 20 year computer tech, I can say the idea scares the crud out of me.

Why?

Because the transmission of the data, EVEN ENCODED, is being done throught a medium (SL not your site) that is inherently unsecure.

Also, have you considered that if this was implimented, users would have no way to know which vendors were 'real' and using your setup, and which ones were just culling their CC code for some serious spree spending?

I'm sorry, but I have to say this also leaves you open to a whole series of possible legal problems. The risk to YOU is not worth it...

And as a side note, I found in interesting that Prokofy Neva said:

"I personally would not want to deal in any large amount on any of these websites because people can get very vicious in SL, especially if they are on some jihad related to forum flame wars or if they believe you have somehow wronged them."

And the next thing I see is:

"I hope you aren't suggesting that I've done that. My site is very simple, and contains no viral component whatsoever.

I have never ripped anyone off, EVER. I have never been vicious or launched a "jihad" against anyone.

All credit card information is given to PayPal. I never see any Credit Card information. NEVER."

and him again...

"Oh Jesus Christ on a crutch. Now Hank is Im'ing me in the game and threatening me, saying "slander will get you nowhere," and accusing me of slandering him."

and you...

"Hijacking my thread about some mysterious service doing this nasty thing to you is the same thing as accusing my service of doing that to you."

...

I think he overstated this problem with online banking, and you overreacted on the defensive. As a person running a small business as well, I have advice for you:

Don't assume and lash out, it makes you the villian. Instead of accusing him, perhaps asking him to clairify WHAT site did it to him might have seemed more reasonable. Also, doing exactly what he mentions fearing in the post is really a bad idea.

Then again, what do I know. I'm a Fool...

This is not an infomercial. I've talked with some people privately about charging fees or accepting liability (I'm leaning towards a 1% fee and no liability), and I wanted to ask the community what they thought. I really do want to hear what people think. If I wanted to post an Infomercial, I'd do it in the General Forum.


Well, I'm sorry someone has done that. You alluded to some service, and you make it sound like me.



As for security, you DO NOT type your credit card number in-world, DO NOT type in any PayPal password, nor is their any SL to RL communication going on.

You simply goto my website (you'll be able to do this from inworld once Version 1.6 of SL comes out and the ability for scripts to open web browsers happens), and buy a Code via PayPal. You then take that code inworld, and either redeem the certificate for L$ cash inworld (only if you are 30 days or older) or redeem the certificate at a vendor that will cash the certificate to pay for the purchased goods and return any remaining L$ balance (anyone can do this, even a newbie).

My website is very basic, installs no ActiveX controls, plugins, anything. It's simply a link to a 3rd party service (e-junkie, which doles out the certificates and handles the back-end IPN verification with PayPal) and then to PayPal for payment. You then receive a plain email with your certificate code. The codes don't expire, and you can give them to friends as gifts, etc.



A very valid concern. The only thing I could possibly do is to use the only RL information I receive...

RL Name
RL Email Address
RL IP Address (I'd have to sift through web site logs to do that).

Would I grief or use that against someone? Absolutely not. I'm not in business to do that. If I were to grief someone with this information, I would be lambasted in the forums and people would spread that I had done something like that. I wouldn't risk my long history in SL to so something like that. Could I do that? Yes. We have the freedom in SL to do just about anything. Would I grief with this info? No. I'd be banned because it's against TOS and just wrong.



Wow, you are exactly right! I am just an ordinary player providing an ordinary service. I appreciate pointed questions about the service. Keep them coming.

As for inner-core, it's funny. I've accused others of being "inner-core" or having special access to Linden Lab. I know see how funny and sad it was for me to do that. Is there an "inner-core"? Not really. Some people have Linden friends, or LL devs that will lend their ear to hear new features or about bugs.

Am I inner-core? I don't think so. Do I have special access to LL? No. I'm a regular player, always have been. I pay my USD$ to access the system (too much at times, lol). I've never even called LL in RL! Though, I do hope to visit the main office someday when I'm in the SF area.

I need to clairify this further: There is absolutely no entering of Credit Card, PayPal, or anything inside of SL or in RL to me. There is no SL<->RL communication, period.

Yes, I'm worried about security, that's why I chose the method I currently use. No communications between the two worlds. I simply keep two lists of codes. One inworld and one outworld. You buy the code outworld, then redeem it inworld. Simple!


Absolutely no CC information is given inworld. You only give your CC information direct to PayPal through a SSL connection in your own webbrowser.

Yes, there is risk to me. That's part of the business plan, and why I deal in small amounts and want to tie an inworld purchase to that.



Yes, I'm sorry for lashing out. But I have to respond to people bringing in false information. The only thing I said inworld was to stop slandering me (false accusations are slander). I'm not griefing him. Besides, posting the single line I said to him from inworld is against TOS, btw. But I'll let that go.

It's probably best to let the people rant and rave in your thread, and let the rant stand on it's own or torn down by others.

Just to clarify: there is no entry of RL Credit Card or PayPal information inworld. Period. There is no SL<=>RL communication going on.

It would be nice to handle PayPal's IPN notification system totally inworld, but I will never have people type in any RL private financial information inworld. Hopefully we'll have more communications capability in the future.

The only problem with accepting credit cards for each transaction are the per transaction costs. It's expensive. So I chose the route of buying a L$ certificate. You redeem that certificate at a vendor to buy something, then get the remaining L$ as cash-back. This allows you to spend RL money, and buy L$ in larger bulk so that you save on transaction fees.