Interview with Christina Wilson, Business Development, Litle & Co.
Q: What’s the story behind your company?
A: Our roots in payment processing extend back to the early 1980s when our founder, Tim Litle, created the first payment processing platform designed to meet the needs of the Direct Marketing industry.
In the 1970s, Litle & Co. founders ran a catalog business and created the first full-service, third-party fulfillment service bureau dedicated to serving catalogs. The 1980s found Litle & Co. innovating the automation of paper-based work flows, again for the benefit of direct merchants. And, in 1982 - a time when catalogs were losing 2% of sales because of inefficiencies in conventional payment processing systems, Litle & Co. built the first payment management system to address the unique needs of catalogs and the card-not-present world, including installment and recurring billers. This system helped Litle & Co. keep chargebacks to less than 0.1% versus the typical 2.0%. Founded in 2001, and based in Lowell, Massachusetts, Litle & Co. is in high-growth mode- acknowledged by No. 1 rankings on both the Deloitte New England Technology Fast 50 and the Inc. 500 in 2006.
Q: What services do you provide for online dating sites & companies?
A: Our payment management engine is designed to help online dating businesses:
Grow revenue: reduce declined authorizations; improve re-authorization success rates; lower refund percentages; increase adoption of alternative payments, where appropriate, and accept international payments.
Streamline operations: simplify connectivity; reduce error rates; get clear, concise and flexible online reports, and automate chargeback management.
Minimize processing and payment management costs: manage interchange; reduce chargebacks; eliminate gateway charges and line charges.
We help our clients accomplish this through a full suite of Merchant, Processing, and Recurring Billing Services. See our Payment Management Engine illustrated here: http://www.litle.com/what-we-do .
A good payment management strategy can help achieve the following:
1. Convert traffic into paying subscribers.
Your marketing efforts are wasted if you don’t turn browsers and trial users into subscribers. To convert as many browsers and trial users as possible, you need to:
Process payments in real time — not ‘after the fact’ batch processing — get immediate feedback to the customer, and let them handle payment issues on the spot.
Give your customer alternative payment options such as PayPal. More payment options mean more payments.
2. Prevent subscriber attrition.
Smooth, seamless recurring billing is one of the most important services that Online Dating sites provide. Our Merchant Services Group specializes in helping you to take advantage of the best tools available, such as Account Updater.
3. Make the most of your marketing efforts.
In order to get the greatest possible lift from your marketing efforts, you need a payment processor who won’t over-react if your chargebacks increase, and who will help you manage chargebacks so that they never stop you from marketing to your community effectively.
Q: Do you do international payment processing?
A: Litle & Co. processes more than 200 currencies for settlement in US dollars. Litle & Co. settles locally in US dollars, Euros, Pound Sterling, Hong Kong dollars, Australian dollars, Canadian dollars, and Japanese Yen.
We continue to add foreign currencies for local settlement based on our merchant demand.
Q: How exactly do your services help to improve conversion into paying subscribers?
A: Easy connectivity and extraordinary uptime make it simple for visitors to subscribe quickly and painlessly. Real-time authorization processing also allows you to catch declines on the spot, letting you offer the customer another payment alternative before you lose the subscription. Services such as Account Updater also work seamlessly with our sophisticated Recurring Billing service so that you don’t lose subscribers when their cards expire or renew.
Q: Please share your view on online dating fraud prevention problem.
A: Much of the fraud in online dating is not attributed to consumers that want to use the site free of charge or to scam money from the site’s client base. In many instances, the fraud is attributed to scammers that want to test credit cards. Online personals sites are an easy target for a scammer who wants to ensure a credit card is still valid so it can be used on another site to buy big ticket items. The risk in using online personals sites to do this is low considering no physical goods are being shipped, phony or no profile information can be entered in order to access the purchase page, and email validation is not required in many cases.
One of the most important aspects of an online dating site is ensuring the integrity of profiles available to paid subscribers. Managing the fraud and ensuring profile content is valid is a costly mission. Whether the company chooses to handle this internally or outsource it to a 3rd party, constant monitoring and updating of fraud rules is necessary.