On the web:

• Incidents of Fraud Following a Data Breach Nearly Double in Two Years, Javelin Study Finds - Digital Transactions - "What we really think is driving that more than anything else is criminals are getting better at figuring out what is of value and then going out and really looking for it..."
• Bitcoin as an API for Money: Creating Money-As-a-Service - ProgrammableWeb - "Bitcoin works on trust by “computation,” a network that is always cross checking itself through its participants."
• Retailers are retailers, ‘not patent experts’ - NRF Blog - "End-users should not be subject to lawsuits for simply using a product as intended."
• The True Costs of Credit Card Convenience Checks - Credit.com Blog - "Paper checks issued against your credit card account can come in handy in a bind, but cardholders should always be aware of the costs involved."
• Moving abroad? 7 tips from a perpetual nomad - Taking Charge - "Cash is still king in most parts of the world."
• What FIs Should Be Doing, But Often Aren’t - TMG Blog - "Act like a retailer — have a strategic game plan, that includes POS, lobby engagement tactics…"

On the wires:

• TrialPay Mobile Revenue Surges 85% in Q1 as Company Announces In-Store Offers to Tap into $2.5T of Consumer Retail Spending - "In-store offers are the result of a proprietary offline platform that has been in development for two years. Bypassing traditional coupons, apps and check-ins, these in-store purchases are instantly tracked via normal credit and debit cards."
• Boku Brings Mobile Payments to Smart TVs with Partner PlayJam - "The partnership brings carrier billing to smart televisions and other consumer electronics around the world, including devices from Samsung, Panasonic, LGE, Vizio, Western Digital, Google TV and VESTEL."

TrialPay has announced that it has raised more than $40 million in its latest round of funding.

“TrialPay’s approach to payments is different,” said Reid Hoffman, Partner at Greylock Partners. “Their tremendous growth in the last year validates the efficacy of the model. We believe that the next generation of e-commerce depends on the ability to maximize revenue from every transaction, and TrialPay is the only company that has successfully leveraged global advertiser relationships to meet that end.”

Visa was also an investor in this round of funding.

TrialPay has announced that it "has more than doubled its total platform revenue and transaction volume in 2010 and expanded its reach to more than 80 million users. TrialPay's transactional advertising approach has evolved from a marketing strategy for software companies into a critical monetization platform for social game publishers, online services, and retailers, with leadership in a wide range of fast-growing categories such as freemium applications and Web services."

TrialPay has announced a redesign of its checkout flow to help its 10,000 online merchants convert more of their free users into paying customers. The company says "the new checkout flow, which features significant UI enhancements and a more streamlined design, is already proving effective: extensive A/B testing showed that the redesign can increase conversions by 10-15% and greatly improves the user experience."

TrialPay has announced the launch of DealSpot, a comprehensive promotion framework that delivers exclusive deals and branded engagements inside social applications. "In order to give publishers control over the deal context, TrialPay has pioneered an industry first: deals automatically appear in games via dynamically loaded Flash components that appear when relevant deals are available to consumers."

Based on results of a study that tracks Mother's Day campaigns conducted by social games on the Facebook Platform, TrialPay reports that Mother's Day generated a 5x boost in social games revenues, driving $1 million per day for publishers with 40% of purchasers being first-time buyers.

"According to TrialPay's research, in the week leading up to Mother's Day, about $1 million per day was generated by "gifts for mom" promotions that paired offers from online flower merchants and others with free in-game virtual goods and currency. TrialPay estimates that these promotions drove a 5x increase in social game revenues over normal daily revenue, and found that about 40% of purchasers were first-time buyers in these games. In addition to adding new buyers, the holiday also helped game publishers more than double their visitor conversion rates - meaning that twice as many players as usual made a purchase during the period."

To download the full research report (registration required), visit http://www.trialpay.com/go/mday_2010. READ MORE »

TrialPay has published issued a new whitepaper titled, “Doing Right by the Consumer: Going Beyond Compliance.” The paper, which is based upon guidelines that TrialPay says it has adhered to since the company’s inception 2006, outlines "best practices for gaming developers, publishers, advertisers and offer companies to ensure consumer protections and long-term success of the industry at large." READ MORE »

In an article titled "Closing the Deal at the Virtual Checkout Counter", Claire Cain Miller writes for the New York Times about how consumers sometimes load up their shopping carts online - and then just abandon them. She notes that "while there is no industrywide data, some e-commerce companies estimate that only about 3 percent of shoppers who visit an e-commerce site buy something, and when they do load their shopping carts, as many as two-thirds abandon them."

TrialPay has announced that it is expanding its payment and promotions solutions to "include a Purchase Incentive Platform, which lets online sellers optimize conversions and boost Average Order Value (AOV) while reducing promotional costs, like deep discounts and free shipping." READ MORE »

TrialPay has announced the launch of a new shopping web site where "shoppers can buy gifts from their favorite brands—and get a free present for themselves in the process (movie tickets, software licenses, game subscriptions, career advice and more)." READ MORE »

TrialPay has announced reaching two milestones today: supporting 6,000 merchants and acquiring its 12 millionth user. According to the company, "this represents a 20 percent growth in merchant and user numbers in just over a month for the two-year-old payment platform." READ MORE »

TrialPay has announced the launch of a new Gifts & Gourmet category with the company saying that "top companies from the food industry have enlisted in this new advertising section, marking a milestone for the payment method widely used for digital goods and services." READ MORE »

TrialPay has announced that, In less than two years, it now has more than 10 million users with more than 5,000 premier merchants having adopted its unique payment platform.

According to TrialPay, "unlike regular options such as Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, Google Checkout and Bill Me Later, TrialPay actually increases a customer's willingness to pay by giving a 2-for-1 with every purchase. In just its second year, TrialPay counts 18 million visitors each month and 40,000 new users every day from around the globe to rival that of other top-tier online payment companies." READ MORE »

Glenbrook's Allen Weinberg and Jim Salters are attending this week's Payments 2008 conference in Las Vegas. Here's Allen's second report from today's sessions including his notes on the panel he chaired this afternoon titled “Payments aren’t about Payments Anymore”.

TrialPay has announced it is partnering with FreshGames to give away ZenGems, Cubis 2 and the Cubis 2 Expansion Pack for free. Using TrialPay, players can get FreshGames’ most popular titles free for a limited time by trying or buying an offer from blue-chip advertisers. READ MORE »

TrialPay has announced that is has closed a $12.7 millionSeries B round of financing - bringing the total amount raised to $15.8 million. The company also announced that it now has 5.2 million registered users - with over 15,000 new users joining TrialPay daily.

In an article titled 'A Referral Service That Ensures Someone Actually Makes a Sale', Bob Tedeschi writes for the New York Times about TrialPay's 'new marketing method that relies on a web of business relationships to give consumers free goods, as long as they buy something else from a long list of well-known online stores.' [Note: Glenbrook recently published a briefing about TrialPay.]

Ryan Kim reports for the San Francisco Chronicle about how TrialPay and FTD are teaming up. "Let's say you're shopping at Cnet's Download.com for some software but the price seems to be getting in your way. Well, TrialPay is offering to make the software free if you buy some flowers at FTD. They'll also take 10 percent off the price of your flower purchase." [Note: Glenbrook recently published a briefing about TrialPay titled "Converting Customers With TrialPay - A New Payment Alternative for Online Merchants" .]

Payments News has covered TrialPay several times. Recently, Glenbrook's Russ Jones and Scott Loftesness completed a fourteen-page Research Brief entitled "Converting Customers With TrialPay - A New Payment Alternative for Online Merchants." To request a complimentary PDF copy of this Glenbrook Research Brief, click here.

TrialPay has partnered with Skype to enable Skype users to be able to make free SkypeOut or international calls when the user tries or buys from TrialPay's network of partners.

TrialPay has announced that it has achieved more than 2.6 million registered users, 1,000 merchants and over 2,000 advertisers using its platform and that its user base continues to grow with more than 10,000 individuals registering daily.

Rebecca Buckman writes for the Wall St. Journal about TrialPay, a Mountain View, California-based startup that allows web merchants to offer consumers goods and services for free - if the consumer accepts another unrelated offer such as agreeing to open a new credit card account. Buckman writes about Zagat's use of TrialPay: "Zagat gets paid by the partner Web merchants for directing business their way -- sometimes even more than the $24.95 cost of a yearly Zagat subscription." More details at the TrialPay web site - and in this earlier article we posted on Payments News for July 17, 2007.

We met recently with Alex Rampell, CEO of TrialPay, a Mountain View, California-based company that provides merchants with a new payment method that allows customers to pay for products by trying or buying from a network of advertisers.