racoma.com.phJ. Angelo Racoma on technology, economics, writing, problogging, and getting things done

One of the benefits of blogging for advocacy is the attention one gets from the movers and shakers. My being part of the PayPal for the Philippines campaign has caught the attention of execs in the electronic payments industry, as well as business owners who are into e-commerce (either planning to start selling online, or already have ongoing e-commerce setups). In fact, whenever I attend EBs and blogger get-togethers I’m usually referred to as the PayPal guy. It’s good to be identified with something.

I had dinner–and a few beers–with the top honchos of YES Payments last night to discuss the possibility of their offering P2P e-payment facilities in the country. This is my second meeting with them, so far, and it was great that we were able to exchange ideas freely. I related the needs of the freelance/problogger/developer community in the country, and they told us about the issues that e-payment providers continually face in the line of their doing business.

It’s All About Risk!

The foremost concerns of any business doing e-payments are security and fraud. When money is involved, there is always the chance of one party defrauding another party, or one party defrauding the system itself. So there is always risk. And the issue is determining which party bears the risk, for the system to work. In some cases, it’s the seller that bears the risk. In some, it’s the operator of the e-payment facility.

Fraud can be perpetrated a number of ways.

* Buyer uses stolen card/card details. Card owner disputes. Chargeback is paid (paid back by seller). If the seller has already sent the goods, it’s his loss.
* Seller does not send the goods or goes under. Card owner disputes. Chargeback is paid by the facility. It’s the facility’s loss.
* Buyer uses legitimate card to pay for transaction. Seller sends the goods. Buyer receives the goods, but claims otherwise. Buyer files a dispute. Seller pays chargeback thru the facility. It’s the seller’s loss.

There are even more ways–don’t get any ideas from me! The point is that there are loopholes that can be exploited. So there the system has to consider the trust factor.

For the most part, dealing with the risk is a big headache to the e-payment facility because of regulatory requirements. I never realized that the banking system asks so much of these companies–there are big guarantees, there are limitations, and there are requirements for compliance with several laws, both local and international. And even the card companies like Mastercard and Visa require a lot, such as security of transactions, regular auditing and subscription costs–something in the range of $15,000 per year (or is it monthly?), which, while affordable to big companies, can be a steep amount for small players.

Social Engineering

On top of these risks, there is one difficulty faced by e-payment businesses particularly in countries like the Philippines without a strong judicial system. Fraud is not so difficult to detect. YES cites cases where fraudulent transactions were flagged, but allowed to push through so the perpetrators can be caught in the act. The problem is once the criminals were caught, the inefficient and corrupt judicial system was not capable of warranting adequate punishment.

Hence, perpetrators can expect be let go with just a slap on the wrist. I can also imagine cases where either the judges or the police personnel could be bribed.

We come back to the issue of risk. E-payment facilities may not be so keen on setting up shop here because they know the risk of fraud is high. Even worse, the risk of fraud not being properly addressed by the law is even a bigger threat. Fraud can be minimized if the legal system is good enough to be a deterrent to people planning to commit crime. But if one knows the system can be gamed, then people will go lie, cheat and steal their way to getting a fast buck.

A Problem of Circularity

So which came first? The chicken or the egg? (Sorry for using a cliché–it sucks, I know.)

I earlier made a bold claim that having good e-payment facilities here in the country–particularly PayPal–would be beneficial to the Philippine economy. However, it turns out that most players (probably PayPal included) would only be open to servicing the country if they can be mitigate or minimize the risks of fraud.

Perhaps for large players like PayPal it’s a bit easier. For small players, it could be a challenge.

Facilities for SMEs and Individuals

YES is considering opening a facility for P2P transactions for the purpose of business and commerce. While they don’t have such a system in place right now, they do have YES Payments for SMEs and YES Pinoy for remittance. None of these services can be used by individuals like myself for receiving payments for goods or services rendered, though. YES Payments works for businesses (well, this does not preclude individuals or groups of individuals from registering as a business). YES Pinoy, meanwhile works for P2P transactions between people with existing relationships–you have to prove you’re related to the person sending money, whether he/she is a family member, relative or friend.

I had been mentioning existing services that could do P2P, like Xoom, which fellow problogger Abe has been recommending, and which I’ve also been using. YES is positioning itself as a strong player in the country because of its presence and support. They actually do have an office here, and they do accept support calls. I think that’s an advantage. I actually tried calling Xoom support once thru their 1-800 number, but since they’re based in California, their office hours are quite off when calling from the Philippines.

What’s Next

If–and once–YES gets their planned P2P service up and running anytime soon, would there be people willing to be part of a test group? Just tell me, so we can make the necessary arrangements.

As for PayPal for the Philippines, it’s a continuing advocacy. PayPal may have already set up here, but it’s still very limited. We can only use the service to pay or send money online, and not receive (not even to load up the account). We’re still pushing for full functionality. If you have not yet signed up, please do so. We would also appreciate any support (such as linking to us and/or displaying our banners).

Check out my post on the “PayPal for the Philippines blog.”:http://www.paypalnow.com.ph/blog/archives/paypal-now-available-in-the-philippines/

PayPal has included the Philippines in its limited-functionality list. This means you can now register for an account and use it to pay online. That’s it. We still cannot do the following:

# Receive money
# Load up the account thru credit card
# Withdraw money into a bank account

It’s a good development, but not good enough. Pinoys can now buy and pay for stuff online. But we cannot receive funds from other PayPal (and credit card) users here and abroad, which is, I think, what we need more. We’re still hoping (and lobbying) for full-fledged PayPal functionalities.

Are you a Flickr addict? I just realized I was more than just the casual Flickr user when some of my blog photos disappeared. Apparently, free accounts have a display limit of the 200 most recent photos. And at the rate I was uploading, I had been far exceeding my limit for quite some time now–I have almost a thousand pics there (and I’m a lazy uploader). There’s nothing like errors and missing stuff to wake you up to the realities of life, and to remind you to read terms of services.

I’ve always wanted to upgrade to Flickr Pro, but one difficulty I had with upgrading (which is cheap at $25, btw) was that I didn’t have a PayPal account. You see, Flickr processes all payments–including credit card–via PayPal. Here’s another reason for the PayPal for the Philippines initiative.

Good thing a friend with PayPal access “gifted” me with a Pro account, on my request. Thanks much! (I won’t disclose your identity here yet–I’ll wait until I get your permission.)

Oh, okay, I’ll be paying up! But still thanks. I wouldn’t be able to pay for an upgrade otherwise.

What do you get with a Pro account?

You get a host of nifty new capabilities with a Pro account, such as unlimited bandwidth, ad-free interfaces (when you use Flickr and when other people view your photos), unlimited storage, and larger monthly upload limits. What I like best is the ability to create an unlimited number of sets. You get the best of both worlds–tagging and organization by sets!

So, show me the photos!

Here you are, folks. Of course, most of these are family photos (talk about stalker friendly, huh!). Here’s a random selection:

Better yet, let’s take a walk on the artistic side with some macros:

Enjoy!

It’s been several weeks since I published PayPal: One Great Way to Improve the Philippine Economy. Quite a number of people have expressed support and interest. A few have provided their insights and inputs into the matter. Others even have dissenting opinions, or at least don’t think that having PayPal would be helpful enough.

Links to these other posts and news items are available here. Reader fedeback can be found on the comment thread.

Things haven’t been quite slow these past days. I guess everyone’s busy. But here are milestones, so far.

* We’ve registered a domain, www.paypal4ph.com and even set-up an update blog at www.paypal4ph.com/blog (thanks to my colleague “J4s0n”:http://j4s0n.com ).
* We asked uber-cool designer Ia (who also works with us at Enthropia) to create some artwork for the site.
* J4s0n is coding a cool sign-up sheet with an equally cool frontpage (Enthropia is the team behind iBox, which I think is really cool). We can probably ride on the existing signature campaign on petition spot launched last year, which has 812 signatures to date. However, I think it would be good to start fresh (and so everyone who would sign up actually knows what the issues are).
* Mainstream media update: Joey Alarilla (journalist, problogger, father, and Palanca awardee) has written about the *PayPal for the Philippines initiative on CNet Asia*. Joey also writes for Inq7.net and I do hope we make it there, too, one of these days. His fellow Inq7.net journalist Erwin Oliva has also expressed interest in the advocacy, and I do hope we get the much needed mainstream-media mileage.

Other ideas:

* We’re likely to move the advocacy site to a .com.ph domain to support the use.com.ph campaign (and since it’s for the Philippines, anyway!).

Open Source / Collaboration

Sad to say, running an advocacy is not that easy. Firstly, I’m quite rusty as an economist, and after all, being a jack-of-all-trades makes one a master of none. So I’m not your expert on tech and e-commerce either, but I do try to make the most out of what information I can digest from other sources. And one of the things I’ve been a big fan of is OpenSource.

The most important thing I learned from the Open Source movement is that collaboration is key to producing great ideas and great output. Hence, with this in mind, I think it’s best to move forward with the PayPal for the Philippines advocacy as a collaborative activity. We are already doing this, as various people are contributing to advancing the cause in their own ways. However, we need to come up with a more defined and focused output. We need to get our facts and figures straight. We need to be able to talk to the right people (and at the right time).

For one, we need to come up with a whitepaper, as Migs suggested on the original blog post. We need a more solid argument to support our cause, and to help convince the right people (i.e., those in government, the banking sector, and even eBay/PayPal management itself) and in this regard, I think collaborative work is the way to go.

So here’s what our next step would be. I’m hoping for inputs and suggestions on how we can go about with it. For now, we shall be setting up a Wiki on the advocacy page to get started on a draft whitepaper (link later). Any inputs and help (with the appropiate sources and citations needed, of course) would be much appreciated.