V-money.net, is this payment system still alive?

When we think about ecommerce it is quite logical that we expect it to feature constant development and dynamics. We expect that businesses conducting their activity in this sector are doing their best to offer new and more competitive services and products. And certainly we become very surprised when one or another company that just recently was very active gets dormant. The kind of hibernation seems to have occurred to a previously active payment system V-money.net. Last time we heard about it was December 2008. At that time Ecommerce Journal reported that the system returned online after it was DDoS attacked. Well, since that time nothing have been ever reported about the service and the latest post made by V-money itself on their official site is dated 07-29-2008 when the payment system warned its users about fraudulent sites which offer fake V-money exchange services. Anyway we decided to take this topic and discuss the technical and commerce features, at least those available to our sight.

Interface

Many electronic currency companies on the internet manage to create such amazing and fine designed web sites that you need several paragraphs to describe their external features. But this does not appear to be true with V-money payment system. Here we don’t see any embellishments or subtle artwork. Of course serious businesses on the web make their websites look serious and it is functionality and convenience that should be pursued first. Still, a website is supposed to look at least attractive and somewhat nice. And that is not applicable to V-money though certainly its design cannot be called ugly too.


It won’t take long time to understand how to use the system as long as all the buttons and options are arranged on a comparatively small area which occupies jus half if a standard 17 inch screen. But if you use larger screens the main page will look more trifling. Unlike other largest e-currency services V-money provides no detailed FAQ on its functions and use. Answering the question “How can I open an account with V-money?” the payment processor says “You can open a V-Money account by going to our Register page.” As for explanation of how to enter or withdraw funds from the payment system V-money answers in a general and evasive manner.

Functions

Registration In order to use any payment service we certainly need to be subscribed as its clients. For these purposes we enter V-money’s ‘Register” section where we are required to fill in the registration form. First thing to be specified is our account name which we would like to be visible to other V-money users. Then we need to provide our e-mail and set a PIN code for the account.


After this we fill in the fields of our personal and contact information and invent a secret question with an answer to it. In the end we enter a Turing number and having put a check mark to the “I accept the terms” box we submit our form. The registration is over and the system reports that the confirmation and the password to our new account was sent to the email address we specified. But in fact the further use of the system turns out impossible as after you go to your email inbox to check for the confirmation no letter from V-money can ever be found. We tried it several times. First time we registered our new account was April 27, 2009. No email message from V-money in the inbox. Then we tried to register on May 2, 2009 with the same email address. Interestingly but V-money didn’t deny registration and once again it reported that our account was successfully created and we can proceed to our member are after we check the confirmation message with the password attached. No message from V-money again.

Inasmuch as account creation failed to be feasible further experiments with the system do not appear to be practicable too. However we will try to restore the picture of the system functionality through the information provided by V-money in their scarce FAQ section.

Deposit funds In order to deposit funds you will have to use the services of exchangers because V-money has not a single option to enter your money into the system, though actually in any case you won’t be able to do this as you will have no account to where you should transfer the funds. Thus, V-money says: “Currently we don't offer direct deposit options, however, our Exchange Partners allow you to fund your account using a variety of methods including Credit Card, Bank Wires, Cash Deposits, and Checks. Visit our Exchange Partners page to see a full list of companies that are ready to help you fund your V-Money account.”

So, the “full” list of exchange partners of V-money include these seven: GoldEx, PayByGold, LondonGoldExchange, GoldArea, EuroGoldExchanges, GetEMoney and Robox.

Withdraw funds Well, the situation around withdrawal options is not too much better because there are no such options as well. Again, it is the exchange partners of V-money who can handle a withdrawal from the system for you.

“[We] currently do not offer any instant withdrawal method. All deposits and withdrawals to and from the V-Money system are executed via any one of our Exchange Partners…Our Exchange Partners offer a variety of withdrawal methods. Visit our Exchange Partners page to view a complete list of companies that are ready to help you withdraw funds from your V-Money account,” states V-money.

Fees Well, since V-money has nothing to offer you in what relates to funds deposit and withdrawal hence there are no fees for these services directly charged by the payment system. You will be only charged by the exchange partners. The only fee imposed on the users of the system is a commission for internal transfers.

V-money charges a 1% fee for internal transfers with $0.01 specified as a minimum fee and $0.50 as a maximum fee. Oh, this is too narly for words! The system is virtually philanthropic!

“The fee is calculated by multiplying the amount of the transaction by the percent, The resulting amount is then matched against the minimum and maximum allowable fee amounts,” says V-money.

Credit and feedback

Surfing through the immense spaces of the web we can encounter only old posts of V-money users who expressed their experience and feelings. Basing on their feedback latest of which was given last year we can say that on the whole the impression is skeptical at best. Most of internet users express their distrust to the payment system as long as it so far has not proved to be reliable and authoritative service on the internet. It can boast of neither huge client base nor an impressive list of merchant partners except a little number of investment projects.

One Internet surfer notes: “V-money still isn’t the most common payment processor around which gives me a good reason not to be a part of it....maybe it all isn’t that bad but then when there are better alternatives around there isn’t a need to take a risk.”

It should also be noted that the payment system is not as cheap as it may appear at first look. The list of exchangers partnering with V-money contains some companies owned by the director and founder of V-money Marco Lavanna. In one of the interviews he himself stated: “My name is Marco Lavanna, I am one of the shareholders of V-Money and also one of the directors. I also own and operate some trusted and well established exchange websites like www.goldex.net and www.paybygold.com”. Thereby we can be absolutely sure that if they do not earn much directly through V-money the people behind the payment service know where their interests lie. Charging through the exchangers for funding V-money accounts and for money withdrawal they surely got their winnings.

Interestingly, one internet user conducted his own research and found direct links between PayByGold.com, AnyPay.com, a payment system, and TotalRecall.de, a music mail-order business online merchant. He reported that the TotalRecall.de which was founded by Marcus Gabler, a successful German Entrepreneur, had the same contact address as that which was specified on the whois for the site of AnyPay.com. The only difference was that the contact name on TotalRecall.de was Marcus Gabler while on AnyPay.com it was Marco Lavanna, who is also a co-owner of V-money.

It really looks kind of suspicious though of course you may say that this is not an indisputable and solid argument to take V-money as a scam service. Well, actually we do not draw such conclusions either. But certainly as this internet user noted “it’s a not good thing”. AnyPay sank into oblivion and now V-money also doesn’t show any signs of live activity. Very strange.

In addition, at the end of the previous year our journal reported that V-money was hit by the DDoS attack, or at least it looked like DDoS. V-money payment system became unavailable on December 04, 2008. Starting that day all the attempts to access the company ended with redirect to www.srsplus.com, the company which provides hosting service where one could see a message that the site was under construction. But at the end of this downtime when V-money came live again there was o changes introduced into the interface of the site. There were no signs of any construction which by the way lasted quite long as usually a site can be under construction several hours or a couple of days while V-money was in downtime for more than 5 days.

Conclusion

Having as precise look at V-money as it was possible we can say that impressions are not abundant. The interface and design leaves much to be desired. The credibility of the payment system is a little doubtful. Besides, there are no actual ways to open a new account and that means only users who were registered long ago can avail themselves of those scarce services available on the internet who transact with V-money payment system. We can only hope that these very users who subscribed for V-money were not defrauded and left out of pocket.