Our primary goal here at daopay is to build up a good reputation amongst internet users and we work hard to add additional features that give consumers confidence in our brand and services. We employ a team of customer service experts who are there to help customers with questions that may arise.
This October, telecom regulation expert Max Ertl joined our team as legal counsel. Max previously worked at the legal department of the Austrian Regulatory Authority for Broadcasting and Telecommunications and later at Freshfields, a leading international law firm, where he served clients with his sound know-how in the fields of telecommunications, competition law, consumer rights, civil law and data privacy law.
More than 40 million people have joined IMVU, an avatar-based social network and virtual world where people meet and interact in 3D. IMVU has the world’s largest virtual goods catalog of more than 3 million items, almost all of which are created by its own users. IMVU Inc. is profitable, and daopay is contributing to this success with phone payments.
Everyone here at daopay is more than excited that IMVU users can now personalize their avatars, shop at the IMVU store and simply charge their purchase to their phone bill! We know that a significant number of people prefer not to use their credit card online – and now that IMVU has added daopay as a new payment option, everyone can simply dial a number and instantly buy credits with their regular mobile or home phone in an easy, secure and convenient way.
Starting this month, we are bringing text/SMS-based mobile payments to even more customers in 65 additional countries, reaching 4 billion phone devices worldwide!
The rollout starts with 35 European and American countries, with 30 more countries following until the end of January 2010. Existing daopay merchants can immediately benefit from this expansion by logging in to their Control Center. If you don’t have an account yet: sign up now, it’s free and easy to integrate into your web site!
Daopay currently enables online users in more than 200 countries to instantly pay for virtual goods and other online content by just dialing a service number from their home or mobile phone – without a credit card, bank account or online registration.
Cameron Chapman of noupe, the web design blog, has asked what the web will look like five years from now. His number one? Micropayments.
“Micro-payments of the future may be closely-related to mobile payment systems. Payment via cell phone opens up whole new area of economic opportunity, particularly in areas where cell phones are more prevalent than computers. Being able to make and receive very small payments, the equivalent of a dollar or less in many cases, via a mobile device paves the way for many in developing nations to participate in the Internet economy in a way that only a few years ago might not have been deemed possible.”
I’m tempted to say that we couldn’t agree more, and in fact, I do. Let me just mention that paying by home phones isn’t a bad choice either
How can we help businesses grow beyond just payments? We’ve come up with an idea that we’d like to “beta test” with a very small number of customers. The programme we’re trying would basically send traffic to your web site and hopefully convert into paying customers – something that I’m sure every startup can need If you’re about to launch your product in the near future and you accept daopay, please e-mail a short description of what you’re doing to andreas at daopay dot com and I’ll get back to you within a couple of days.
Our experience shows that shorter call durations lead to higher sales volumes for merchants. A local presence with domestic phone numbers is the key to making calls significantly shorter: where it takes 5 minutes to complete a payment with an international call, a customer can dial a domestic number to pay the same amount within only 30 seconds – done!
This month, we are making these quicker phone payments available to more than 8 million consumers in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Macedonia. The numbers in these countries have already gone online on July 1st and you can start using them immediately: if you have made your products available in “All Countries” in the Control Center, there’s nothing you need to change; otherwise, please log in now and simply click the respective checkboxes.
With the increasing number of calls we’re processing globally, we want to make sure that everyone who calls us remembers having a positive, friendly experience when paying with us. This month we’ve asked Anja, a female speaker from Germany, to record new announcements for our German callers - and we’re more than pleased with the results. But just hear it yourself – it’s a pleasure to listen to Anja, even if you don’t speak German
Starting July 1st, Hungary is raising their VAT (sales tax) from 20% to 25%. Merchants who sell to Hungarian customers may want to adapt their prices accordingly in order to keep the same payouts. The easiest adjustment is to multiply your current end user price with 1.05.
We’re preparing our attendance at two upcoming Game shows in Germany: Games Convention in Leipzig and GamesCom in Cologne – and we’d love to meet with you! We’ve set aside a quiet room where we can have a cup of coffee or cool drink and share our experiences with online payments and how businesses like yours can grow and become even more successful.
We have given the Control Center a little – long overdue – polish. It’s the first step in an ongoing process to improve the overall look and friendliness of our interface. No worries: you’ll still easily find your way through all the functions you need – everything stayed at its place, so you don’t need to learn anything new.
You’ll notice that we’ve added three new elements to the welcome page:
Earnings overview. A convenient chart showing the current month’s
total earnings in your account currency.
Last and Next Payout. Your last and next payout dates and amounts,
so you’ll always know when you’ll receive your funds.
News. Current news and information about changes or upcoming events.
What’s also new is that we’re now showing a default view when you click on a menu item.
We hope you find these changes helpful and appreciate your feedback and comments!
With the increasing number of calls we’re processing globally, we want to make sure that everyone who calls us remembers having a positive, friendly experience when paying with us. This month we’ve asked Anja, a female speaker from Germany, to record new announcements for our German callers - and we’re more than pleased with the results. But just 
