![]() ![]() ![]() Since then, the company has grown to more than 200 employees, with more than 700 merchants accepting Bill Me Later payment services. They landed their first customer in 2004. "We knew we had the essence of the product."Īfter adding Tom Keithley and Mark Lavelle as founding members, the group obtained its first funding in late 2001. "We walked out of high-fiving each other," Talbert said. The two did some research and stumbled on the idea of providing later billing for online transactions similar to the way a magazine subscription allows new customers to pay after they've signed up for the service. Marino first hired Vince Talbert, who is now the vice president of marketing. (The company was known as I4 Commerce until August, when its name was changed to reflect its branding.) He left that position in 2000 and spent some time at home in Maryland trying to figure out his next venture, which turned out to be Bill Me Later. They met again as employees of Delaware's First USA, where Marino was an executive vice president. The company's founders have known each other since the early 1990s, when they worked for Citibank. Its standard service, an online payment system owned by eBay, has 153 million users.īill Me Later executives said they are not worried. The company said the offering should boost its sales along with retailers, noting results of a study it commissioned that suggest 56 percent of PayPal users are more likely to spend if they can defer payment.Īnalysts said there is plenty of room in the alternative-payment market for multiple players, but they acknowledged that PayPal has the potential to bring big business to retailers. In August, the payment services company launched PayPal Pay Later, a service that gives consumers a credit line without a credit card. It is a demographic retailers covet, but it is still a relatively small base, compared with the customer delivery potential of a new offering by PayPal. Most of them are women between the ages of 35 and 55, college-educated and married with kids, according to the company. "It's part of our ongoing efforts to give our customers as many payment options as possible."Ībout 3 million people have signed up as Bill Me Later users. His company began offering Bill Me Later services late last year. "Bill Me Later has definitely brought us additional business," said AirTran Airways spokesman David Hirschman. They also like that Bill Me Later advertises its retailers to consumers. ![]() Some merchants say the Bill Me Later service brings them customers who would not otherwise shop online, and it costs about 40 percent less than credit-card transactions. "Bill Me Later was really the first to innovate in that respect, where they actually open up a new line of credit for you," said Adil Moussa, an analyst with Aite Group LLC, a Boston financial services research and advisory firm. They still require a credit card, though, unlike Bill Me Later. will store a shopper's credit-card information so customers do not have to share it with multiple merchants. About 1.3 percent of online orders turn out to be fraudulent, the company said.Īs consumer concerns about such theft have multiplied, so have payment alternatives.Ĭompanies such as Google and PayPal Inc. A report this month from CyberSource Corp., a California electronic payment processor, says e-commerce fraud is up 20 percent this year, with about $3.6 billion stolen from consumers. ![]()
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