A company called SolidPay is looking to wrangle itself a slice of the lucrative online money transfer business currently dominated by NeTeller and before that, PayPal.
“We got the idea for SolidPay because there’s nobody out there besides NeTeller at this point,” SolidPay CEO Robert Rosen told Covers.com. “The market monopoly that they have must be immense. We figured that, done right, there was room for somebody to come in and take a percentage of it.”
Although SolidPay's online payment service went live only a few weeks ago, its inception started about two years ago. Rosen, a former banker, and his associates needed that much time to overcome the legal loopholes and collect the necessary funds to set up the site, based in Montreal, Canada.
“It was very difficult getting all the infrastructure we have in place,” Rosen said. “But it’s all done above board. All of our associates know what we are doing and what we are going to do.”
SolidPay works much like NeTeller. People deposit money via credit card, Western Union, bank draft or at one of 10,000 “load centers”, which are essentially check-cashing businesses that have agreements with SolidPay.
Members are not charged anything to send or receive money. Instead, SolidPay makes money by levying an eight percent transaction charge on its merchant clients (e.g. sportsbooks).
In return, the merchants receive a system in which to track their in-bound and out-bound payments. They also have access to BulkPay, which allows a merchant to pay multiple SolidPay members and non-SolidPay members at once.
Once a member (e.g. bettor) loads their account with SolidPay, they receive a debit card to transfer their funds to the merchant of their choice.
Rosen says SolidPay’s first target is the online gambling industry. The company currently has agreements with a handful of sportsbooks including Royal Sports, Cascade and Majorbetting. It's also in talks with bigger books including Pinnacle, VIP, Olympic and Jazz.
“What we’re trying to do is get a big name, like a Rio, to get some of those guys on board,” Rosen says. “Hopefully having some of those guys on board, it will bring in the small ones.”
Rosen claims SolidPay will protect its members from failing sportsbooks and alternatively will protect sportsbooks from crooked players.
“As long as (the money) is in SolidPay, then it’s safe,” he says. “We’re not extending credit and we’re not at risk for charge backs or frauds on all of our accounts.”
“We’re being selective with (which sportsbooks) we’re going after,” he added. “We got some requests with people we don’t want to be involved with. We’re not just taking anybody because if that was the case, we would have 10, 15, 20 merchants by now.”
SolidPay’s first goal is to have 30 sportsbooks by the beginning of the football season. Once they reach that target, Rosen has plans to open a virtual shopping center.
“We’re planning to run it properly and efficiently,” Rosen said. “Like any other new company, I’m sure there’s going to be hiccups along the way, but we’re here to deal with it.”
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